Dear Editor,
The Minister of Education in his recent address to the Education Day rally called on teachers to “take the stick and the wild-cane out of the school” and deal with discipline in a humane and a modern fashion. He has not been the first education minister to do so and it made me wonder how far the Ministry of Education is willing to go to back up this call.
This issue of corporal punishment in Guyana’s schools has become a contentious one. On the one hand there is the call (usually by non-teachers) for teachers to stop beating. On the other, there are those (many teachers included) who argue that banning the wild cane without adequate alternative systems would result in chaos and anarchy in our classrooms.
I am a teacher and I believe that beating, flogging, spanking ‒ whatever we choose to call it ‒ as a behaviour modification tool, should have no place in our schools. Fifty years of reliable research has shown that any perceived benefits of corporal punishment are eclipsed by a myriad of potentially damaging long-term effects.
I completely understand the concerns of many school administrators, parents and teachers that removal of the whip from our classrooms, would render us impotent in the eyes of our students. Students, they fear, would take advantage of this defencelessness (much like some did the ill-conceived no child left behind rule) and the result would be a complete breakdown of order and discipline in our schools. “Stop beating the children”, we pontificate from our soapboxes. But no alternatives are offered, no mention is made of training in alternative behaviour management techniques and no change is made in law to protect all involved and effect the change we preach.
If we are serious about removing corporal punishment in our classrooms it would take a lot more than mere talk.
It would require appropriate legislative changes; it would require awareness and re-education on a national scale and it would require adequately equipping our teachers with the necessary skills to teach discipline and maintain order in our schools in the absence of what has ‘worked’ for many generations.
So are we really interested in replacing corporal punishment with less damaging, more effective behaviour management tools? Do we have the political will or are we just making the right noises in the hope that those pesky middle-class noisemakers would shut up? Time will tell.
Yours faithfully,
Wil A Campbell
