School days are indeed one of the most memorable days of our lives, right? If given a chance to choose from all my school day memories, the most explicit one which is still stuck in my head is my first day at the assembly hall where the principal said to all the students that we all are the future of our country, and we all teachers are always there beside you to help you pass through any obstacles.
At that point of time, those lines made me feel very privileged and lucky to have such wonderful teachers. I won’t say I didn’t get any punishment but thrashing us or giving any other sort of corporal punishment was the last resort for them.
They always gave us chances to improve, even explain things from time to time about why something is bad or good.
Never in my dreams had I thought that one day I will be writing an article about corporal punishment which in the passing years has changed into a very brutal practice towards children and many schools and teachers are praising and supporting it.
So what is this corporal punishment? On a literary language corporal punishment has a huge definition with a big list of pros, only for the teachers that is, but to me it’s nothing but a brutal abuse which not only affects a child on a physical level but also mentally, and its impact holds for a long time.
Why is it bad and I don’t support it?
Here’s the answer, just assume that you have become a child again and you are back in school attending your class and suddenly fall into a doubt and want to clear it. But you are afraid because you know your teacher will humiliate you in front of the entire class.
Being a child, it’s very common that you will do a little mischief and have some fun, but you are sitting at a corner literally petrified that if caught your teacher will thrash you with a ruler in the most brutal way possible to teach a lesson.
Not concentrating during class hours can prove to be a disadvantage because you will miss your lessons which could prove to be unbeneficial for your future or coming exams. But instead of learning this difference between what’s good for you and what’s wrong – which could only be explained by the teacher, you are just trying to survive or avoid the beating and humiliation.
As a result, a child is learning nothing, instead he is just waiting for the class to get over as soon as possible and like this his whole school days are spent in doom, terror and survival.
That’s what the scenario of many schools is today. This is how they claim to teach students how to behave, by giving corporal punishments for even a simple mistake.
Many teachers claim that corporal punishment is the best time saving way of keeping a child under control. They say if we beat them or punish them for committing a mistake they won’t dare to do the same thing for the second time and the respect they have for their teachers will remain consistent.
Not only it is a complete nonsense, but also hard to believe that the teachers who take the responsibility to make us a better person prefer this act of mental and physical abuse.
Keeps the child in control? They are children not dogs! And it’s a time saving process? They are children not Maggie cupa mania noodles, that if we only pour boiled water it will get cooked and save time.
Good things take time to happen, a child learns every day in his life, they are innocent beings who deserve to have fun, do some mischief and for that schools are like their second home where they learn they make friends and they clear their doubts. And for them teachers are like their second parents, and if they abuse them every time, they tend to get detached from that environment.
Three out of eight school going children are a victim of corporal punishment. And it is also not because of his own mistakes, but because of being an unlucky tool for a teacher who takes out his own life’s frustration upon him.
As a result many children suffer from school fright, tend to makes excuses for not going to school, suffer silently and eventually their marks degrade.
Corporal punishment needs to stop because it does nothing else but petrifying the children from teachers and schools. And that is definitely not a good thing for the future of our nation.
This post is a part of our #SaveTheKids Campaign. To check out more posts from this campaign, click here.
