PUPILS DO AS THEY PLEASE

We grew in a time when corporal punishment was the order of the day in schools and we were beaten to the last atom of our strength.

Teachers were notorious for battering pupils and the Education Ministry was silent on corporal punishment for several decades. This form of punishment shaped and refocused the lives of children to the effect that there were limited cases of violence and crime in schools because corporal punishment would be meted out on learners in due course. Parents neither had a say nor complaint about it; why because they knew a child had to be brought up in a fairly decent manner.

Banned

I don’t want to sound like an exponent of corporal punishment but I was only highlighting the positive aspects of this banned form of punishment. I find it wise to compare the school life before and after the ban of corporal punishment. Our hearts throbbed with excitement when corporal punishment was phased out; perhaps replaced with the ‘controversial’ positive discipline which has seen a lot of pupils in schools perpetrating violence and committing sex scandals, among other serious issues. Since the introduction of positive discipline, criminal activities have been reported to be on the rise in schools, partially due to the fact that a teacher is no longer entitled to mete out corporal punishment on a pupil. As a result, pupils have thrived on violence and criminal activities because their freedom is not tinkered with now; they do as they please.

Government has a colossal task of redefining the meaning of positive discipline in a broader perspective. Positive discipline did not fail the school authorities, it has failed the learner, he has not complied with it but has misinterpreted its main objective. And as a result schools have become a fertile ground for violence and crime. Positive discipline has not come to temper with schools’ regulations and rules and teachers should continue to implement discipline in schools in a way that will be desired by parents.

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