City Bhaskar's (Bhopal) article on corporal punishment

A case of corporal punishment in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh

This was in NavDuniya, Bhopal edition.

Is Corporal Punishment Really Needed?

KOLKATA, India, 10 September, 2009 – Child radio reporters on a panel discussion on ‘Shishu Tirtho’ programme voiced their concerns on corporal punishment and sought alternatives from teachers to the practice of corporal punishment.

Shishu Tirtho’ is a children’s programme produced for and by children and is aired on RadioJu, a community radio station of Jadavpur University. The programme is part of a special initiative by the UNICEF Office for West Bengal and the School of Media Studies, Jadavpur University, to train children as child radio reporters and provide them with airwaves to express their opinions.
Panelists demand answers from teachers.

The child reporters on a panel discussion on ‘corporal punishment’ shared their experiences of corporal punishment in schools. The child reporters gave instances of children being beaten at schools; their hair pulled for not doing homework and made to kneel in hot sun for long hours. The child reporters talked about the recent incidents stories like the recent one in Burdawan district where the student had been killed by a duster hurled at him by his teacher. One of the child panelist demanded answers from teachers as to why they were being unpunished.

Rubina (name changed), another young panelist on the programme, questioned whether punishment is really needed and if yes, couldn’t there be an alternative. Discussing alternatives, one of the child panelists suggested that if a child failed to do four mathematical sums, as part of punishment s/he could be given eight sums to complete. This solution didn’t find acceptability with other panelist who felt that children should be helped to understand where s/he went wrong and how to rectify the mistake.

Why are we being forced to comply to parents wishes?
The children panelists felt that even at home, children are punished by their parents for not complying with their wishes. “If we are good at drawing but dislike formal studies, why are we beaten up by our parents for not doing what they want us only to do,” said a panelist. He questioned whether it was right on the part of the parents.

The children felt that parents should encourage children to manage their time well. ‘We could be given space for our individual interests, like drawing or football, and importance shouldn’t be only given to formal studies,” the panelist added. Parents often apply pressure on their children, expecting them to be the best at everything. This topic also brought forth situations about parents pressuring their children to perform the best. The children argued that this lead to low self-esteem and ultimately, poor performance.

source www.unicef.in
Link - http://www.unicef.org/india/child_protection_5621.htm

Indian Education: Crime and Punishment

'Spare the rod, spoil the child' is an old English saying that has long lost its meaning in its country of origin. In India, despite all the brouhaha over child rights and school education reforms, corporal punishment is a practice hard to go.

The latest is the shocking incident in a school in India's eastern state West Bengal where a girl died after she was hit by a duster hurled by an angry teacher. India Blooms correspondents Debajyoti Chakraborty and Sreya Basu reports.When the guardians of 10-year-old Babli Ghosh in West Bengal's Andal railway town sent her to school on May 14, they never thought it would be her life's last journey. Schools, her guardians thought, were meant for learning and growing up in the company of peers and caring guidance of teachers, till it proved to be a road to the house of death for this family. Babli, who was a student of Andal Girls High School, located about 150 km from Kolkata in Burdwan district, died after a teacher angered over her class performance hurled a duster that fatally hit her on the forehead.

After she was hit by the duster, Babli started vomiting in the classroom. Shockingly, the school management did not inform her immediate guardians (she was staying with uncle and aunt for studies in Andal with her parents living in another south Bengal district) until after she had died, around 5pm that evening. Rekha Bhakat, the teacher who hurled the duster, fled after the incident.

The headmistress filed a police complaint in the face of mounting protests.Bibasa Mondal, one of Babli's 50 classmates of Andal Girls High School, recalled the events of that day.'She (the teacher) found some mistakes while going through the class work she has given on Babli's Bengali notebook. Seeing that she has failed to write correctly, Bhakat shouted and then threw the duster at her,' narrated Bibasa.'The duster hit Babli, who was sitting in front row, on her forehead. She collapsed and vomited four times,' Bibasa recalled.

A teacher carried Babli on her lap to a nearby nursing home in the overcrowded Andal Bazar around 12.45 pm but her condition deteriorated very fast and she became unconscious. At around 4.30 pm, when the child became still, she was taken to a hospital in the industrial town of Durgapur, about 15 km from Andal, where doctors declared her brought dead.It was only then that her guardians — maternal uncle Biswajit Sarkar, who works in a shop in Andal and his wife — were informed.

On Friday, hundreds of people surrounded the school demanding that the teacher be handed over to them. Headmistress Tapati Bhattacharjee called the police but the crowd refused to budge. Babli's body was kept at Andal police station as people did not allow the police to take it to Durgapur Hospital for a post-mortem. The gherao was lifted only after the headmistress lodged a police complaint. Shocked parents of Babli, especially her mother Kabita, were uncontrollable when the scribes visited their house in Andal. 'Why we have kept her here for study instead of keeping her in our own house we don't know,' lamented Shibendra Ghosh, the girl's father.

Only a month ago Babli was promoted to the High School from the Primary School. She was waiting for the school holiday when she was suppose to accompany her parents to their house in Barasat for the vacation. While the family of the victim grieve and the school management try to fire fight the situation, the incident only brings to fore the prevalence of corporal punishment in schools despite all the sound and fury over the issue for years now.

West Bengal School Education Minister Partha De was at pains explaining the futility of his government's awareness efforts. 'We give training to teachers against corporal punishment but it seems that these teachers hardly take any lesson from those training sessions,' said De. On 17 February this year, Manisha Roy, the headmistress of Gopalmath Girls' High School, another state run school in Durgapur in the same district, a teacher snipped the hair of three class nine students- Sritikona Bhattacharjee, Rupomoni Dhibar and Sunanda Hazra- during the prayer session. Keeping long hair is considered unruly in schools but the guardians were furious to learn that a teacher actually could force them to cut the hair in school.

After protests, the lady teacher blamed for the act was arrested by Durgapur Police. According to studies, cases of corporal punishment are on the rise across the country.According to the National Report on Child Abuse by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) in 2007, two out of three school-going children in India are physically abused. The crime is rampant in every district of the country. Boys are marginally more likely to face physical abuse (73%) than girls (65%). Corporal punishment in both government as well as private schools is deeply ingrained as a tool to discipline children and as a normal action.

But most children do not report or confide about the matter to anyone and suffer silently.The report also revealed that 69% of children nationwide face physical abuse, including corporal punishment, in one or more situations. Of children abused within family, in majority of cases the perpetrators were parents (88.6%), followed by teachers (44.8%), employers (12.4 %), caregivers (9.5%), NGO workers (4.8%) and others.

The most common reported punishment was being slapped and kicked (63.7%), followed by being beaten with stave or stick (31.3%), and being pushed, shaken, et cetera (5%). For many the hurt resulted in serious physical injury, swelling and/or bleeding.

UNICEF in accordance with the Convention of Rights of the Child states that children have the right to protection from all forms of violence, abuse and maltreatment. Corporal punishment in any setting is a violation of that right. Physical and other forms of humiliating and abusive treatment are not only a violation of the child's right to protection from violence, but also counter-productive to learning and may adversely affect the child's performance in school. The negative consequences for the child include low self-esteem of the child, sadness, anger, aggression, desire for revenge, disrespect for authority and can have severe implications for a child's development and are therefore a cause for concern.

Corporal punishment also interferes with the child's desire and ability to learn and, in fact, fear of corporal punishment in school is often a significant factor for children dropping out of school. In the most severe cases like the one at Andal, it can lead to death.Eliminating corporal punishment in all settings is also a key strategy for reducing and preventing all forms of violence in society. Human dignity, physical integrity and equal protection under the law should be the guiding principles that inform decisions for eliminating corporal punishment in all settings.

However, the Child Rights Charter 2003 of India specifically states: 'All children have the right to be protected against neglect, maltreatment, injury, trafficking, sexual and physical abuse of all kinds, corporal punishment, torture, exploitation, violence and degrading treatment.'In 2007, a 14-year-old student of a school in Mumbai was slapped on the left ear by a teacher for talking in class. The blow punctured his eardrum resulting in moderate hearing loss.

Corporal punishments in schools is already prohibited in nearly half of the world's countries. In the past 20 years, 18 countries, including Sweden (1979), Finland (1983), Austria (1989), Bulgaria (2000), Israel (2000), Germany (2000), Ukraine (2004), Hungary (2005), Greece (2006), Netherlands (2007), New Zealand (2007), Portugal (2007), Venezuela (2007), Spain (2007) and Costa Rica (2008), have enacted laws prohibiting corporal punishment in all settings-home, schools, alternate care and in the judicial system.

In August 2007, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) wrote to all chief secretaries with detailed guidelines recommending there should be no gradations, while judging corporal punishment. Some of them included complaint boxes in schools where students can drop their complaints, monthly meeting of the Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) or any other body such as the School Education Committee (SEC)/Village Education Committee (VEC) to review the complaints and take action. Almost 12 states and Union Territories- Haryana, Delhi, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Nagaland, Pondicherry, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan- have responded and taken measures based on the guidelines.But as the debate rages and measures are discussed, students in Indian classrooms cope with fear of physical violence. --IBNS

Assam Government to ban corporal punishment in schools

By Peter Alex Todd
Guwahati (Assam), Aug.2 (ANI): Consequent to a survey report that revealed corporal punishment being rampant in most of the schools across the Assam State, the Government has plans to put a ban on it.

Corporal punishment is banned in States such as Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in the north, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the south and Orissa and West Bengal in the east of India.

The survey carried by the Guwahati High Court’s Law Research Institute (LRI) in four districts of Assam revealed that children are often subjected to physical punishment in the schools.
Dr. Jeoti Baruah, Director, Law Research Institute, Guwahati High Court, said that after analysing the survey report, they found that 69 percent of the school children confessed corporal punishment existed in their schools. “What is more alarming is that the students feel that the punishment given to them by teachers is justified, as it is them who are at fault,” Dr. Jeoti Baruah.

There are many schoolteachers who agree that teachers should take extra care while dealing with students. “Corporal punishment should be there but it should not be extreme. The teachers are also responsible. At time they tend to get overexcited and even end up injuring the children. The teachers should be careful while punishing the children,” said Uttam Teron, a teacher of Parijat Academy in Guwahati.

Assam’s Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi recently expressed his desire to follow the footsteps of other States and impose a ban on corporal punishment in all the schools of the state.“We want to abolish the corporal punishment or physical punishment in schools. Some states have already started the process also, but I want to follow that step also,” said The Assam CM.

According to a nationwide survey conducted by the Educational Research Centre, cases of corporal punishment between 1990 and 2003 stand at an alarmingly high rate of 700 to 1000 incidents annually. (ANI)