hen I was a student in one of the better schools of Delhi, it was common to see teachers slapping students. Scales being broken on our knuckles was as common a sight too, and as early as in Class 5, though luckily I always escaped punishment. When I reached Class 6, I wasn’t that lucky.
During one of the sculpture classes, an assistant came around and slapped me hard on the head because in all my creative excitement, I was busy talking to my friend Partho Saha, who was someone I looked up to when it came to creativity. I was furious. I wanted to hit back. I controlled myself, but went back home and told my father that he must do something about it.
He was from the same school of thought as mine — rather, I had inherited his points of view. So the next day, my father took me to the principal of our school — a legendary name in education those days, Mr RS Lugani — and told him that physical punishment is not what he would allow his son to go through in school.
So after discussions, it was decided that I would from then on carry a letter in my pocket, which mentioned that if any teacher had a problem with me, it could be written down and subsequently sent to my father, but the teachers couldn’t hit me. And the letter bore the stamp of the Principal’s office. I think it was the most unique exception that our principal had ever made. And from thereon, till I passed out of school, no teacher could ever physically hit me.
However, like I mentioned, this was an exceptional case. The reality was that students were getting beaten up regularly almost by all male teachers and by a third of female teachers. The solace that students used to find was from the one or two good words these bad and rude teachers had for them. And thus the word used to spread about specific teachers, that though they beat students they had a kind heart. I found it sickening.
The truth is that by hitting anyone — especially a child in school — we only display our lack of education. We display the fact that we aren’t fit to be teachers in the first place. Because if we want a world where peace stands a chance, where road rage doesn’t happen and where people are more tolerant and loving towards each other, we have got to show peace, love and tolerance from the very beginning to our children in schools. We have to see to it that they grow up seeing no violence.
In my 16 years of experience as a teacher, I can say very confidently that there can be absolutely no reason for which a teacher is required to physically punish a student inside a classroom or in front of others. If a teacher is good, and committed to teaching — and not churning out mechanical morons who mug up topics — he enjoys the process so much that even for students, it becomes akin to recreation. Learning becomes fun and the question of forcing any student doesn’t arise.
It’s not a student’s responsibility to enter a classroom and be attentive and learn. It’s a teacher’s responsibility to make the student feel interested in the class and make him or her feel that it is a life-changing experience. Only then will students attend classes. And if that’s not the case, then in fact students shouldn’t attend classes. So a good teacher never has student problems. Only bad teachers have. And they use physical punishment as a shortcut to make students attentive.
But human nature unfortunately is such that physical punishment in childhood never helps. It gives rise to mainly two kinds of people. One, those who get used to it and don’t care and become all the more adamant. And the other, whose personalities get deformed due to the fear of punishment — such students may become more obedient but their personalities are ruined forever.
Therefore, we need laws in the country which completely prohibit the use of physical punishment in school. A school’s job is to change lives and not to ruin them. Yes, there are children who come from dysfunctional families, who get beaten up at home and have a nature that is often very negative. A teacher’s job is to change such a nature. And there are scores of examples where great teachers have changed the most hardened of negative souls.
That’s what a teacher is about. Yes, if the teacher is not trained well enough to change the students, and the student is a menace, then the teacher can at worst hand the student over to his or parents. But a teacher is no police and should have absolutely no legal right to physically assault children. And parents must not allow their children to be physically punished in school.
(The writer is a management guruand Editor, The Sunday Indian.)
Courtesy:The Pioneer Daily
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