Are teachers empowered to punish ???

Yesterday, I happened to watch a show on NDTV-Hindu. It was a discussion with school children,  about this recent happening in a school.

A 13-year old boy, in Erode, Tamil Nadu, was thrashed and later hospitalised. His mistake was that he fell on a girl, while travelling in a bus and losing his balance.

This news really saddened me because of many reasons.

– Punishments are still prevalent in many schools. I found more news articles, while searching for this one.

– Physical injury to students by teachers,  is totally incomprehensible to me.

– Why people refuse to listen to the other side of the story ???? The one who complained first, takes the lead.

– Can’t a boy-girl interaction be on healthy grounds ???  Imagine, if a 5th standard girl has complained about this incident, then how much brain-washing is happening at home.

The more shocking was the discussion in that show, where the children felt it was OK for the teachers to give a pinch, or give a pat on the back (not a friendly one) or a slight hit on the head. My God, what have we trained our kids to accept, as part of school life ???

The parents don’t have the right to hit the children. Any attitude problems, unwanted personality traits are to be monitored and dealt without using physical force. Why, physical force will never solve that problem at all.

Then, what gives the teachers the right to hit the students ????

If the teachers are unable to manage a class strength of 40 or 50, then let them take a break.  This is not the way, the students should be made to think. Little bit of hitting or pinching is OK – I am still not able to digest this.

With the amount of exposure, due to the internet, the problems are also many. I agree. So, we need to devise methods to resolve those problems, not take up the cane as the problem solver.

The workloads are high, actually it is more after the cancellation of the X board exams – now, that’s another post by itself.

With too much of workload, the children are unable to finish work, study and do well in the tests. So, if a student repeatedly fails, is it reason enough to punish him ???? What about the insensitive teachers who give unlimited work loads, to be finished in one day ???

The students are not miracle makers – to finish off the school work in a jiffy, learn the answers all in a minute, perform excellently well in exams, show aptitude for sports and extra curricular activities – all these are not possible for every child in the school.

Why don’t the teachers learn to understand the capabilities of the students and give them space to learn, differently ????

Why cant the teachers guide and coach those students who are not doing well academically ????

Punishments are not solutions.  Lets change them.

Let our children not be led to think, that small punishments are OK, its only the big ones that are not OK. Small or big, it is still a punishment.

Even with stricter laws being enforced, we still remain to be backward in our thinking !!! Lets really banish these corporal punishments – in the real sense of the word.