School teachers discuss canings
Final contributions from the Indian forum I’ve been covering, from the perspective of the teachers:
Visha: I teach in an all girls boarding school. Corporal punishment was bent in our country since 1998, but in private schools it’s still administered. So in our school disobient girls get the cane or the ruler. That too with permission from their parents of course.
Riak: I found the experience of different persons about their corporal punishments in schools quite interesting. I have been teaching Geography in a co-educational high school in the rural areas of West Bengal for the last 8 years. In my school corporal punishments of students are not uncommon. The punishments include caning, slapping, pinching, ear twisting, kneeling on the floor, sit-ups, standing on one leg, and standing outside classrooms holding ears, etc. Punishments are given irrespective of the age of students… in case of girls, they are caned only on their palms or hands. For serious repetitive offence, the students (mostly senior students) are sent to the headmaster. The teacher sending the student accompanies him or her to the headmaster’s room. There, they receive severe caning from the headmaster. Sometimes the caning is so severe that it brings tears even to the teacher witnessing the punishment. I have sent only once two students to the headmaster. However, I feel that this rigorous discipline ultimately is beneficial to the students. The result of our school in the secondary examination is really excellent. There had been no failure during the last 10 years.
Sally – I have been teaching physical science in high schools in the state of Karnataka for last four years. My experience as teacher is that punishment policy of the students varies from school to school. First I joined an exclusive girls’ school where all the teachers were female. In that school corporal punishment was virtually non-existent… After serving for two years, I joined a very well reputed co-educational school, where, teaching staff were mostly female (about 95%) and the principal was also a lady. There to my utter amazement, I found that all the teachers as well as the principal are regularly caning and beating the students, even the senior students are not spared. When students are used to getting cane, then if they find that one teacher is not caning, then they will harass that teacher and not concentrate on her teaching. Therefore the guiding principle of the teacher in such school is ‘punish or perish’. Another interesting fact is that in a co-educational school, perhaps the girls in the company of boys become rough and tough and require tough disciplining like caning.
Ravi: I am a teacher in a girls school taking higher classes. It is a very old school and the head is a nun who uses the cane on the child irrespective of the class. We are encouraged to take the cane to the class or some of younger colleagues feel shy to use the cane and resort to using the duster to knock at the knuckles. I use a cane and normally for a naughty higher class child, I give two on each palm and two on the legs. I give around 8 strokes and in extreme cases of telling lies or stealing or showing ugly faces, I do remember of giving around 12 to 15…..but this is rarely done.
