Education Minister Priya Manickchand says while she is personally against corporal punishment being administered in schools many parents do not see such disciplining as abuse and hence the need for consultations.
She added that what is addressed in the UN Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child, which Guyana has ratified, is child abuse and not specifically corporal punishment.
This comment came in light of a letter published in the August 05 edition of the Stabroek News with the headline: “Guyana has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibiting the infliction of corporal punishment in government schools so what is the purpose of the consultations?”
When asked about this, Manickchand said that the UN Convention did not deal specifically with the issue of corporal punishment but that of child abuse. Most Guyanese, she continued, do not consider beating children as a form of child abuse.
Article 19 of the Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child says in part that:
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.
Article 37 of the Conven-tion says in part that:
States Parties shall ensure that:
(a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Human rights activists have argued that these articles are effectively a prohibition against corporal punishment.
The Education Minister said that while she wants to ban such punishment from schools, consultation with the public has so far seen parents and teachers alike against it being abolished. However, she noted, this cannot yet be determined since the consultation process is ongoing.
Manickchand said she cannot impose her personal thoughts on Guyana and as a result, the consultation must be held.
“They are trying to determine the public’s view….We have adopted the convention wholesale but the convention does not prevail over the constitution of Guyana. We have just adopted wholesale the convention,” she explained.
Alliance For Change executive member and spokeswoman, Cathy Hughes, stated that corporal punishment is totally uncalled for.
“It is totally unnecessary since Guyana has ratified the convention so I would like to assume that there has already been consultation… We are against corporal punishment,” she asserted.
She recalled that in the last parliament AFC member Chantelle Smith laid a motion to have corporal punishment abolished.
Smith’s motion had called for the National Assembly to declare the continued use of corporal punishment in schools to be a violation of Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. She had asked the Parliament to declare it a violation of the constitution and to recommend the abolition of corporal punishment under the new Education Act.
Meanwhile, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) parliamentarian Amna Ally said that neither corporal punishment nor the consultation would be supported.
“We are basing our stance on several pointers,” she told Stabroek News while listing several international conventions that Guyana had signed on to dating back to 1991. Former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, she added, had come out of a national forum and condemned corporal punishment.
“We’ve come of age to have these obsolete means of punishment of children thrown out, gone! We must understand from a psychological perspective that beating drives a fear into children and causes a
spinoff of many other ills for example, some run away from home, some become aggressive in their early years and later progress to aggressive adults… and some become fearful of talking in the classroom and other such issues,” Ally explained.
She further stated that it is time for the Guyanese society to be educated and be enabled to inculcate different disciplinary methods. “Life in school must be activity oriented; we must try to reward our children for performance. At all times, we must keep away from this brute force and ignorance that those long ago held on to. It is a new era, a new time; we must reform our minds to a change in an advanced world,” Ally suggested.
