Brutality not the solution to student indiscipline
News of teachers taking to severe forms of corporal punishment, at times bordering on brutality, comes to light with shocking regularity. Teachers claim it is done to discipline children, but some adopt sadistic measures beyond the pale. Like the teacher in Uttar Pradesh who used a drilling machine on the hand of a young boy who could not recite a mathematical table; luckily, the boy’s friend pulled the machine’s plug before the injury turned severe. Children have lost hearing, vision and even their lives after being thrashed mercilessly by teachers, and one boy collapsed after running continuously on the school field in the afternoon sun.
Strangely, such tragedies continue to occur in these times of new awareness about the effects of such excesses and strict rules governing the behaviour of teachers. Section 17 of the Right to Education Act, 2009 imposes an absolute bar on corporal punishment, which could be classified as physical punishment, mental harassment and discrimination. The Act prescribes disciplinary action and even imprisonment against the guilty person. Assault, abuse and neglect, which cause suffering to the child, is also dealt with by the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, and applies to anyone in a position of authority, including parents and guardians. In fact, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights mandates that every school must develop a mechanism to ensure children’s safety and also regulate teachers’ behaviour.
While this is a new and disturbing trend, there is a different school of thought at the other end of the parenting spectrum, which believes in sparing the rod and spoiling the child completely. This section is parent-driven, upholds the child’s rights as supreme, and is critical of even the sting of a cane or a sharp rebuke. Faced with this new wokeism among parents, most teachers are in a dilemma over discipline. They have all but given up their traditional ‘weapons’ to keep children in order, especially with an increase in the number of youngsters resorting to suicide after the slightest rebuke, criticism or disapproval.
Somewhere, in this new age where both the family structure and school ecosystem are undergoing a change, both teachers and parents seem to have lost that fine art of disciplining the young—with measured doses of authoritarianism, love, fear and forgiveness, and an eye on the welfare of the child. We sorely need a reworked guru-shishya parampara.