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society
Indo American News • Friday, December 17 , 2010
Still Wielding the Cane to Punish Students continued from page
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rules at school and home. There are behaviour theorists who question the validity of any punishment as a tool for learning, recommending instead systems of reward for positive behaviour. When parents and teachers equate “discipline” with “punishment” and couple this with violence, the consequences for children can be catastrophic. Sometimes, children who are brought up in an environment of violence in the form of cor corporal punishment learn to accept it as normal in the process of growing up. When they become parents and/or teachers themselves, they see nothing wrong in using corporal punishment on their children and students. The Impact of Corporal Punishment in Schools In May 2006, Saath Charitable Trust released a research study, The Impact of Corporal Punishment in Schools supported by Plan International India, New Delhi. The report looked at the incidence and the extent
American Indian Foundation Honors Shekhar Kapur
of corporal punishment on school children and the impact it inflicts on them. The study was carried out in one district each in four states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Using participatory research tools and methods, the study covered 41 schools. The research team interacted with 1591 children, and also members of various children’s organisations. Among its main findings, the report outlined the following: * Corporal punishment is an accepted way of life in schools and at homes. In all the 41 schools and surrounding communities the team visited, corporal punishment stood out as a common theme. * Almost all teachers and parents had no hesitation in accepting that they punish children physically. Many argued the children cannot be disciplined without punishment. * In more than 20 schools the team visited, the students actually showed or pointed out the stick with which they are beaten. * The team intermittently came across more severe forms of punishment meted out to children, such as: kicking them severely, making them starve (at home), tying them (with rope) to chairs/poles followed by beatings, assigning physically strenuous work both at home and outside
(usually in the fields) etc. * A child often faces a series of punishment for the same/single “of “offence”. The sequence of punishments starts with the teacher; the same child is then punished by the head teacher for having “invited” the punishment; another punishment - generally, beating - awaits the same child at home if the parents learn about the punishment at school. * Teachers across the four states, especially UP, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh, revealed that there were just too many students for them to handle. This report, like several others, shows there is a long way to go, before children become free of physical punishment in schools. As a result, it is quite often the victims themselves who take it upon themselves to sustain the demand for change. At the Junior 8 Summit that ran alongside the G8 Meet in Italy in 2009, Samuel Viswanathan, a teenager, screened a ten-minute film on corporal punishment. Mercilessly beaten in school, this boy from Shoolagiri, a small village in Tamilnadu, wanted his film to sensitise teachers and parents. “I have gone through it, and do not want my fellow students to face the ordeal,” said the boy who now studies visual communication at Loyola College, Chennai.
CALIFORNIA (SI): American India Foundation’s Seventh Annual Southern California Gala, which was witnessed by over 500 people who filled the main ballroom in the glamorous Ritz-Carlton Hotel, honored filmmaker and director Shekhar Kapur and raised funds for needy rickshaw drivers in India, reports Parimal Rohit of India West. Entitled ‘Wheel Power,’ the AIF annual gala raised an estimated $500,000 for its Rickshaw Sangh project, a microfinance initiative empowering cycle rickshaw drivers in India to rise from poverty by helping them own their own vehicles and rid themselves of debt. Almost 10,000 rickshaw drivers were reportedly assisted by the AIF program and hopes to reach out to 90,000 more.
INDO AMERICAN NEWS • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17 , 2010• ONLINE EDITION: WWW.INDOAMERICAN-NEWS.COM
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