Schools spare the cane
Lebogang Mosikare | Friday June 5, 2020 16:50
FRANCISTOWN: In Botswana, corporal punishment is practiced at homes hence it is not surprising that it is still a norm even in schools.
For most Batswana, the idiom “spare the rod and spoil the child” is a truism that should be practiced in order to instil discipline in children. In fact, the practice is so prevalent that even the country’s laws recognise it as a form of punishment for people who commit minor offences.
According to Wikipedia, school corporal punishment from the Latin words for “the body” - corpus and corporālis - is the deliberate infliction of physical pain/discomfort and psychological humiliation as a response to undesired behaviour by a student or group of students. It often involves striking the student directly across the buttocks or palm.
Other scholars describe it as a discipline method in which a supervising adult deliberately inflicts pain upon a child in response to a child’s unacceptable behaviour and/or inappropriate language. The immediate aims of such punishment, scholars posit, are usually to halt the offence, prevent its recurrence and set an example for others.
Past and former students in all basic education public schools in Botswana will attest to having been caned at some point in their journey of education.
One may remember their encounter with that scruffy teacher at the school gate wielding a long and hard cane waiting to punish latecomers.
In synopsis, corporal punishment has and still serves a useful purpose in disciplining children both at the home and school set-ups although some hold a view to the contrary. In most public schools, corporal punishment is the most common form of chastisement although in some few instances, some teachers were hauled before the courts of law for using disproportionate force when administering it.
However, some teachers hardly administer corporal punishment therefore, it was not surprising that a teacher at Francistown Senior Secondary School many years back bragged that he went to the Universities of Botswana and London to study knowledge and not how to administer corporal punishment.
While corporal punishment is widely practised in many countries across the world, it was banned in British state schools in 1986.
Hence, it was not surprising for a British Business Studies teacher at Setlalekgosi Junior School who had recently arrived in Botswana in 1996 to manhandle a local Social Studies teacher.
The local teacher was manhandled by his British colleague for caning students who had arrived late at the school football ground for extra-curricular activities.
In Botswana, the administering of corporal punishment was recently halted in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. The government took the measure as a safety precaution to curb the spread of coronavirus, which medical experts say can survive on some surfaces like wood for some hours.
The headmaster of Mater Spei College, Jabulani Munyere said that teachers had been instructed to stop applying corporal punishment on students after the outbreak of coronavirus.
Conscious of the fact that coronavirus may easily spread if teachers used objects like sticks to administer corporal punishment, Munyere explained that caning learners may put them at great risk of contracting the virus, hence the practice was temporarily banned.
“We discourage teachers to corporally punish learners. In the interim, we have instructed our teachers to use other forms of punishment like squats to discipline learners,” said Munyere who added that they hope that learners will desist from doing any unacceptable behaviour again. Although corporal punishment is widely practised around the world, it has its pros and cons.
A doctoral degree student at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Jorge Cuartas, said that despite the negative effects of corporal punishment on children’s development, including anti-social behaviour and higher risks of depression and other mental health complications, only 53 countries across the world have outrightly outlawed the practice.
Another source, Vikaspedia says: “There is an association between corporal punishment meted out to children and maladaptive behaviour patterns in later life such as aggression and delinquency. In a study entitled “The consequences of corporal punishment”, Vikaspedia further says that students who suffer from physical punishment become violent and aggressive in nature. “The study recommends that in order to reduce the use of physical punishment in schools, teachers must be aware of the negative effects of corporal punishment through seminars, workshops, interactive discussions and providing programmes so practice of corporal punishment could be voluntarily stopped,” according to Vikaspedia.
The Dean of the Faculty of Management and Social Sciences at the Institute of Southern Punjab in Pakistan, Professor Abdul Ghafoor Awan, echoes Vikaspedia’s words. In a study entitled, “The impact of corporal punishment on students’ performance in public schools”, whose objective was to highlight decreasing academic success of students and to identify the aggressive behaviour of students in response to corporal punishment, Awan says that there must be a conducive school environment for the students so that they may be able to participate in healthy and extra-curricular activities which may develop a learning environment for the students.
All said, the above academic studies, highlight that while corporal punishment has desirable results, it must be exercised sparingly with caution because it also has negative consequences especially in a society like Botswana that is deeply cultural.