Readers' Corner: Corporal punishment has no place in modern schools
Corporal punishment has no place in modern schools
Latest reports indicate that corporal punishment is rampant in our schools. This is not only against the law, but it is an affront on the process of shaping and building of character in children.
The use of corporal punishment in schools or even at home is no longer a debatable issue. We concluded this matter and legislated against this practice. It is an abuse and does not help to discipline children.
Educationists have long acknowledged the harmful nature of corporal punishment and its associated emotional and physical problems. Teachers who often use the rod are reluctant to try progressive alternatives to disciplining children.
The infliction of pain upon the body of a student as a penalty for doing something disapproved by the school is simply counterproductive to children’s development. It humiliates children and dents their egos.
It is possible to argue that we are an undisciplined nation partly because of the belief that we can solve our problems through the use of force. Because of this mind set, we are prone to abuse of power. When we brutalise children, we lower their self-esteem and teach them poor self-control. This leads them into unsatisfactory relationships with others in society.
I know that those who use corporal punishment perceive it as either the way to successful control or as a last-resort measure. However, the major issue that parents and teachers should consider is how corporal punishment interferes with the process of intelligent socialisation and character development in children.
We cannot look at discipline only in terms of how children can be controlled. This is, to say the least, a wrong paradigm because it does not help us to instil a sense of responsibility, adventure and innovativeness in children.
The use of corporal punishment in schools promotes a very precarious message that violence is an acceptable phenomenon in our society. It sanctions the notion that it is meritorious to be violent toward the weak, defenceless and vulnerable.
It encourages children to resort to violence because they see their authority figures or substitute parents using it. This is a dangerous message to promote in our society. The bottom line here is that violence begets violence and is not acceptable in a civilised nation.
Psychologists have long asserted that corporal punishment inhibits the accomplishments of children and undermines trust. It erodes the youngsters’ basic trust, stimulates mistrust, anger, and resentment.
It also undermines the teachers’ ability to interpret a pupil’s basic needs and to provide an environment of mutual trust conducive to learning. By school going age, the child should have developed a feeling of autonomy. The teacher has to accept this development and learn to delegate some control to the child.
There are many reports on physical harm that we cause children by beating them. There are a number of ugly recorded incidents of severe physical damage, lower spine injuries, nerve damage, and even blood clots due to paddling.
There exists a whole range of orthopaedic complications, which can result from striking the hand of a child with a cane, ruler, strap or other such implements.
Doctors say the hand is particularly sensitive to injury because of the proximity of the ligaments, tendons, nerves and blood vessels to the skin, which does not have underlying protective tissue.
Younger children are even more susceptible to permanent deformity because of the possibility of injury to growth plates in the bones. Teachers who practice this should be ready to be punished.
EGARA KABAJI
Prof Kabaji is the deputy vice-chancellor for planning, research and innovation at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology and chairman of the Vihiga County Education Board. [email protected]
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Exam ranking serves no purpose
Kiminini MP Chris Wamalwa, the mover of a motion on ranking, is determined to have ranking not only restored but also given legal force through legislation.
When former Education Cabinet secretary Jacob Kaimenyi outlawed ranking, his move was met with mixed reaction. Owners of private schools and the Kenya National Union of Teachers opposed the move. They argued that in the absence of ranking, it was difficult to make sense of the whole process of examining candidates.
However, the abolition of ranking received support from a majority of Kenyans who had all along held that ranking was turning education, a serious national process, into some sort of beauty contest to celebrate a small fraction of candidates.
For instance, if 100 candidates are ranked nationally against a candidature of 525,802 students who sat for KCSE, then it means 0.02 percent of candidates are ranked.
Again if the ministry ranks the best 50 in each county, we end up ranking only 0.44 percent of candidates. Where are 99 per cent of students in this process of ranking if they are not just spectators?
When Dr Fred Matiang’i took over from Prof Kaimenyi, teachers’ unions and private sector players with vested interests in education rushed to congratulate him, hoping to endear themselves to him. In fact, they reportedly requested him to restore ranking. Little did they know that Dr Matiang’i was to Prof Kaimenyi what Joshua was to Moses.
Dr Matiang’i has in fact retained stringent measures put in place by Prof Kaimenyi. He has hit the road with impromptu visits to schools that have, in many instances, caught head teachers flat-footed. Universities without requisite facilities and teaching staff are facing imminent closure.
But it is his dismissal of a request by some individuals to reinstate ranking that has dealt a blow to owners of private schools. I believe it is the same individuals who are now using Parliament to return ranking through legislation.
The reason owners of private schools are keen to return ranking is that they use it as a free platform to advertise their schools.
Owners of private schools should secure space in local dailies to advertise their sterling performance; we can’t allow them to use a process funded by taxpayers to compare their performance with that of children of the poor who learn under very harsh conditions. Ranking has no logic; neither does it serve any educational value. The essence of learning is to help students apply what they learn in school to address societal problems.
The knowledge they acquire while at school should be able to serve them when they graduate into the outside world. Unfortunately, our education system, which encourages rote learning, does not test this ability.
On the contrary, ranking breeds pride in those who perform well and a feeling of despondency in those who rank poorly.
A majority of students who feel betrayed by an unjust education system react by dropping out psychologically, if not physically. Their poor showing in exams helps convince them and their colleagues who rank higher, that our education system is purely meritocratic and that those who fail have no merit.
Why is Hon. Wamalwa eager to claw back the ongoing efforts by the Ministry of Education and Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development to reform our education system and make it accommodative to the majority of Kenyans?
COLLINS MUSANGA
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Kiswahili and English cannot be integrated
I want to differ with Franklin Mukembu’s article titled "Teach English and Kiswahili as one subject" (Saturday Nation, February 20, 2016). A look at the syllabuses of both languages shows they complement each other.
For instance, both have functional writing, comprehension, grammar, summary writing, composition/essay writing, debate, and public speaking, among others.
The outstanding difference is in the language of instruction; one English and the other Kiswahili. Added to this are the skills — listening, speaking, reading and writing, that are taught by both.
Furthermore, literature, poetry, oral literature versus fasihi, ushahiri, and fasihi simulizi are but identical twins. Consequently, just as a text will be analysed in terms of plot, characterisation, themes and stylistic devises in literature, so will it be in fasihi.
The issue of translating a difficult text into either language for easy grasp, too, cannot go unchallenged. Let those who want to write produce their own works and translate other people’s books. This breeds laziness in terms of creativity.
Personally, I studied linguistics and dropped isimu at university because there were no linguistics textbooks written in Kiswahili. One had to read in English and sit exams in Kiswahili! So of great importance would be to develop Kiswahili through research and writing good course books.
EDWIN OTEYA
The writer is a freelance journalist and teacher of English and Literature based in Nairobi.
