Dr (Mrs) Vishiesh Verma
The ancient Greeks, who arrived at the concept of ‘Schools’ would be horrified at what it has come to be today. The word, ‘School’ means – a place where learning takes place at leisure.
Far from making school life a memorable delectable period in one’s life in Indian Social set up, it has been made unduly stressful right from the grass root level. The crammed classrooms with so many students, the heavy school bags, the parents with endless anxieties and ambitions, the management with the insatiable appetite for more profits; all these factors and many more have changed the perception of the ‘School’. The modern business oriented impersonal system of education makes the teacher a clerk, a machine, and a grindstone doing the same thing again and again becoming a mere cog in the wheel. Yet it is also true those persons choosing the profession aren’t rightly qualified, preferring to act the part of “surrogate parents” during the class hours they go back home with a resolute indifference not very different from the shift workers walking off at the end of their eight hour duty.
In the present educational set-up of the schools, the teacher student relationship is based on power structure where the student is treated as the indigenous primitive object who knows nothing; his will has to be conquered. The student is voiceless in school education. The learning demands freedom, our classrooms most of the time denies this pre-requisite to students. The system is designed according to the convenience of teachers not for the learners. The syllabus is prescribed textbooks written; courses taught in such a manner that teachers can give tests, conduct examinations. Learning is straight-jacketed into programmed teaching with the idea that knowledge would flow from black board into the minds of pupils. An average school student of middle class family is more traumatised than benefitted by the harsh disciplinary practices of the schools. In this context, a few news items of severe punishment inflicted on the students by teachers for one reason or another, reported by the news papers are reproduced here with the dates of reporting.
On 24th Sep, 2012 Mohd. Yasin a class IX student of Govt High School Salwah Mendhar(J&K State) was beaten so mercilessly by his math teacher that his eye got injured and he was to be hospitalised and the matter was reported to the police.
There can be absolutely no reason for which a teacher is required to physically punish a student inside the classroom in front of his peers. If a teacher is good and committed to teaching and not churning out mechanical morons, who mug up topics- he enjoys the process so much that even for students, it becomes akin to recreation. The learning becomes fun and the question of forcing any student to learn does not arise. It is teacher’s responsibility to make the students get interested in classroom teaching. So a good teacher never has students’ problems and bad teachers have and they use physical punishment as shortcut force to make students attentive. A good teacher is that teacher who believes his job is to make better human beings through the education he imparts. He is that person who believes that his job is to make students believe that learning inside the class will make them better persons. He is so passionate about this that he innovates ways to make his teaching so interesting that students don’t find it a burden and enjoy the same. For such a teacher, punishment is not an option at all – the only option is good and passionate teaching. And the only religion for such a teacher is obsessions to make the student sitting in the front row of the class understand his teaching as well as the student sitting in the last row of the class. A teacher is thus not merely a teacher, but a trader of his students who look up, with respect to him. For many a thing and sometimes hunger for a word of guidance, appreciation, approval, encouragement or consolation. His heart should be in his eyes and his eyes everywhere.
On 6th Sep,2012 ,in Bandel (District Hoogly) Seven Students of Class IV of Don Bisco School while decorating their classroom for Teachers’ Day Celebrations started playing with foam spray. The Vice Principal Subir Sen was on his surprise visit, the inside scenario of classroom enraged him to the extent that he beat the students to the extent that the parents had to move to Police Station and lodge a complaint against him.
No doubt, orderliness is desirable and even necessary but it should not be bought at the price of damaging the children. Orderliness ought not to be thought as an aim in itself but rather as the inevitable result of correct treatment. Punishment on the other hand should teach a child that he has broken a school rule and shouldn’t repeat it again. Slips of behaviour are natural part of a child’s development. They have various priorities and often school is not as interesting as playing outside or watching a cricket match. Therefore such slips on the part of young children should be corrected wisely.
Beating children has never disciplined them. The only thing it serves is quenching a power hungry teacher’s quest for control and quick fix solution to quieten a noisy bunch of students. At what expense? Apparent orderliness shouldn’t be mistaken for true discipline. Student may pretend to be altruistic, just to escape the wrath of tyrannical teacher. When the authoritarian control is weakened the molten lava within would gush out in all its fury. Type of physical punishment that some schools administer is wrong. Firstly, there is a risk that the student’s faculties can be permanently damaged. Besides, being punished in front of his peers, may cause damage to student’s mind and his intellectual quality may decline curtailing his creative thinking. Thus the demoralised student develops resentment, rebelliousness, hatred and negative attitude towards teachers and school.
On 10th March 2012, in Vishakhapatnam Principal Murthi of MSM Public School, Murali Nagar had beaten a class IV student S.Pavani with cane on her hands so severely that it caused deep cut wounds which looked like blisters and she was sent to King George Hospital for medical treatment. Her parents lodged a report at Kancharaplem Police Station. She was beaten mercilessly for speaking Telugu in school. The Principal had banned the use of any other language except English in the school. It is a shame for an institution to have a Principal ignorant about multilingual nature of the country and the constitutional provision available for learning three languages in each school.
In spite of the fact that Supreme Court of India banned corporal punishment in schools in 2000, there are numerous reports of the violations of the order. The section 12 of Right to Education Act which became effective on April 1, 2010 also banned corporal punishment. On 7.3.2012, it was reported that 75% of the school kids are still caned and 69% are slapped. Between April 2011 and January 31st 2012 NCPCR received 1150 complaints of violation of rights of children, including 70 complaints of corporal punishment.
Going to school has to be a memorable experience in itself. It is high time the teachers start realising that a noble profession like teaching requires not only degrees but patience and creative mindset. Telling to students about wonderful ideas of the world, engaging them in creative activities and keeping them occupied, giving them small challenging tasks are all means to make school what it is actually meant to do to transmit knowledge.
(The writer is a former reader Coordinator of University of Jammu.)
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