Corporal Punishment: Is It So Necessary In Schools

Has corporal punishment truly helped in disposing of degenerate and deviant practices in schools? Are children being raised to be obedient to school rules and regulations for the betterment of the larger objective? We have all been victims of corporal punishment well, except you never grew up in Ghana and had no parents to discipline you when you go wrong. Separated from the customary parameters of the home, the main other institution allowed for corporal punishment is the educational institution. When I mean corporal punishment in this piece, I am alluding to the spanking, caning punishments.

In the wake of the many school shootings and headway in the educational sector, attention has turned once again to the need for more stringent discipline strategies. Many researchers have spoken against the use of corporal punishment as they believe that it does not do any good when it comes to controlling behaviors of individuals, neither has there been any strong evidence to indicate that violent behaviors are a result of a child being paddled or spanked.

It is not surprising that most African countries allow school administrators to implement corporal punishment as a method of discipline. Each school has its extraordinary model of executing discipline in the school, others preferring caning, others sanctions, suspensions and writing words. I quite remember when I was in senior secondary school; of course, I wasn’t that much of a saint with law and order. It was time for P.E (physical education) activity and I didn’t want to go so I remained back in class, however, it was mandatory for everybody to participate in P.E. Unfortunately, the school proprietress caught me in class and chose to punish me for violating school rules. That day I spent all siesta periods writing “I promise to always participate in P.E activity”. I had to continue writing this, sentence line by line until I completed a whole exercise book. By the time I was done, my hands hurt and for sure I never missed P.E exercises ever again.

Like I said earlier, some schools grant teachers the unrestrained choice to administer particular corporal punishment, while other schools leave the decision to the principal discretion to determine when a spanking or caning is called for, what tool to use and specific force to be exerted to address the rowdiness.

It is additionally vital to take note that, some school may manage corporal punishment at will but not on all students. Yes, there are some students who are special to the school probably because he/her parents are large donors to the school or the child’s parents are school administrators. The child grows to understand that they are favored and end up misbehaving and disrespecting teachers to a large extent. This is an uncontrolled behavior that when not properly managed would produce a deviant behavior in society. School administrators are facing frustrations with kids not respecting teachers and the learning environment for other students is disrupted by unruly students. Teachers are stressed as they work to discover worthy techniques or acceptable methods of discipline that allow order in the learning environment.

They are many other alternatives in contrast to corporal punishment

Corporal punishment cannot be scrubbed off the discipline plate as students need to be taught a lesson for misbehaving. Paddling may leave bruises on the body and therefore school authorities can consider other alternatives. Instead of spanking, the child might be given probation or suspension from class. With the precedent, I gave initially, it may seem stupid and dumb but that was one discipline I could not forget even till now. They could kneel down before their peers to control misbehaviors. When this is done, the student understands he/she did wrong and the discipline was just done to keep them from doing it again and to fill in as an impediment to other students who might be planning to adopt such awful conduct. More so, if administrated correctly, paddling can be viable and not leave marks.

If schools can be honest to themselves and unequivocally inform rich parents that their children will be punished if they go wrong would be a starting point for transformation in the educational sector. Principals of school ought to be reasonable in executing discipline to students whether it’s their kids or not. No one is above the law.