Scarred With Whips: The agony of Osu Children's Home inmates

The Never-ending agony of Orphans at Osu Children's Home in the name of Discipline

Anas Aremeyaw Anas reports from Osu Children's Home, Remand Home and La Yahoushua School.

Tossed about in a violent storm of oppression, overwork, physical abuse and emotional assault at "their" Osu Home, the inmates of Ghana's biggest orphanage trek to school every day, hoping to find sanctuary in the raucous excitement of school life and in the gracious tenderness of their teachers. But alas! The youngsters have become increasingly disillusioned as the awareness hits home that they have no appeal against the tyranny of the two institutions of adults appointed by society to protect and train them. They find themselves trapped between a painful twin-irony; the irony of an orphanage that has become a rather deadly anvil and a school that has proved an equally ruthless hammer.

To the caregivers in the Osu Children's Home, the Remand Home and teachers of some schools, corporal punishment meted out in the form of caning, kicking and slapping, has been, and will always remain the only form of disciplining children. The teachers resort to violence as the only way to teach these children to desist from bad behaviour. At the Osu Remand Home, life is a perpetual cycle of corporal punishment for the inmates.

During The New Weekend Crusading GUIDE's investigations into abuse, maltreatment, neglect and cases of multiple deaths within the Osu Children's Home, this reporter came across many cases of gross physical abuse which were meted out to the children within the Home and their schools, all in the name of discipline. As a result, some children have developed fear and dislike for their caregivers, with many others playing truant to escape the whip at school, a situation that has taken a toll on their general academic performance.

THE CASE AT LA YAHOUSHUA
At the La Yahoushua School, most of the teachers were found beating children for reasons such as non-payment of school fees, school levies and academic non-performance. Most teachers found delight in abusing the rights of these children by inflicting pain with ease and leaving many scars on their (children's) bodies. It was normal practice for teachers within the school to send children to go and buy bundles of canes that are used to punish them.

These cases were in flagrant disregard for the Ghana Education Service (GES) Code of Conduct on corporal punishment in classrooms; which requires among other things, that no more than six lashes should ever be administered to a child found to have erred; and each case must be justified by teachers and implemented with the head teacher's consent. Under these rules, all cases of corporal punishment must be entered into a special log book.

This directive has however, been pushed to the backburner, as many teachers continue to flout the code and issue indiscriminate punishment to the students. “It [corporal punishment] is still practiced because no measures have been put in place by the GES to ensure that the rules are enforced in the school. We have never had any book to record punishments given to these kids. I am even sure it would be news to most of my colleagues,” a teacher at the La Yahoushua School explained to the reporter.

Corporal punishment has long been criticized due to its negative impact of the development of the child. As a solution to deviant behaviours, it only serves as a quick fix, but is detrimental to the child and does not provide a lasting solution to the problem.

This case is usually rampant in public schools in Ghana, since most private schools have adopted alternative ways of disciplining children. “When you misbehave in my school, you are made to pick up litter around the compound or made to sit alone to write an essay on why you misbehaved,” Kylie Beales, a 17-year old upper [grade] six student of the Roman Ridge school told this reporter.

THE OSU REMAND HOME
Aside their rash-ravaged bodies, many of the children detained in this facility have sustained many injuries due to the adverse effects of corporal punishment. They are faced on a daily basis with the terror induced by corporal punishment from their caretakers. They are beaten, kicked and made to weed when they misbehave.

In one of the many instances captured by this reporter, Mr. Amankwah, the manager of the facility, was seen beating a number of boys in the Home because a piece of fish head meant for food had vanished overnight.

This case of punishing children has often resulted in severe wounds, aggressive behaviours and increased hostility towards the perpetrators.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
Among its many side effects, children are left with stress, anxiety and fear which normally slows their cognitive development and results in fewer neurons in the brain.

Dr. Murray, a child psychologist, maintains that “corporal punishment is an outdated method of discipline for which alternative solutions must be devised. There is research in the fields of psychology, medicine and education which suggests that the more children are spanked, the more likely it is that children will engage in aggressive behaviour, lying, bullying and assaulting others.”

According to Dr. Murray, adults who hit children are sending a hypocritical message which suggests that “I can use violence but you do not need to.”

Over the years, many calls have been made by parents, human rights activists and some neurological experts on the need to ban corporal punishment from Ghanaian schools, due to its detrimental effects on the child and the long term backlash it generates. As a result, the GES introduced the new code of conduct for schools. It however, appears that some teachers are ignorant of this code while the few who know it flagrantly violate the code to the letter.

At the schools this reporter visited, most of the teachers quoted scripture to back their beating of children. “if you spare the rod, you spoil the child,” was the excuse most teachers gave when they were questioned. With this in mind, the teachers see the cane as the only tool for correcting bad behaviours.

Speaking to The New Weekend Crusading GUIDE on this situation, Rev. Bernard Agyei, an international evangelist and theologian, disagrees on the Biblical excuse teachers and caregivers use to back corporal punishment. “The rod here is a code of conduct and not necessarily corporal punishment. When we see rod in the Bible, it means a way that gives comfort without causing pain. It is the same Bible which says thy rod and staff comforts me,” he preached.

Corporal punishment has a boomerang effect on the development of a child. It teaches children not to do certain things without imparting any lessons or providing ethics and reasons for not behaving in a particular manner. According to Platinni Ashiagbor, a child rights activist and Founding President of End Violence Against the Next Generation, this method of discipline defies logic and is unbeneficial to a child's wellbeing.

“Teachers would tell you that the only language the African child understands is the cane; which is very discriminatory and which is racist. 'Didn't I say don't do this?' (Paaammm!). The child picks no lesson out of that. The white child is no more human than the African child. It's the style they use in educating them which makes the difference,” he said.

“Violence is violence; irrespective of the perpetrator or the victim. When you hit an adult, it is assault. When you hit an animal, they tell you you're cruel. But when you hit a child, they tell you it's in the interest of the child. What lesson are we teaching our children? Let us stop it.”

Unfortunately, the code of conduct put in place by the Ghana Education service has not been monitored in many schools. Some teachers feel that the code has been given without proper guidelines and training on alternative methods of discipline. “These things would continue as long as there is no monitoring. There is the need to provide teachers with some form of training in disciplining children by using positive and non-violent ways that can be incorporated in the teachers' training curriculum,” says Kate Kove, a private school teacher in Accra.