at August 19, 2005 3:51 PMI was hoping against all hopes that I could end the Friday on a good note, but here is the story of a certain Kalpana Kumari who was so enraged by a sleeping pupil in her class that she hit in the head with a pencil hard enough that a piece of lead got stuck in his scalp and had to be removed by a doctor. How old was the child? All of FOUR! This makes me furious and just takes me back to my childhood. My sister was a chubby little thing in nursery with really cute, chubby cheeks. Of course, her nursery teacher’s favorite punishment when my sister messed up…was to slap her hard on the cheeks. I remember when I went over to her nursery to eat lunch with her and I would see her getting slapped around. She would be so scared when I made any mess in the lunch area, since that would mean more slaps.
I myself went to a missionary school where a “sister” almost broke her cane beating me up since I had my hair open - I was in 4th grade. When my sister was in First grade, her new teacher’s favorite way to punish her was to pull on one cheek while slapping her hard on the other. Even when we were in eigth grade, I remember once that I could answer something in class that other students missed. My reward was that I could hit on the palms of the students who missed the answer with a scale. Since I didn’t hit them hard enough, the teacher hit me hard to show me how I should have hit them.
I cannot imagine how all the above abuse helped me or my sister in any possible way. I completely fail to see it. It actually messed our minds up in a way since I remember when we monitored younger students when their teachers were on break, we were as cruel to them as their teachers. We didn’t see anything wrong with that. It still breaks my heart to think of the horrid way were treated and we then treated the little kids. All this in the name of education! That’s surely what kids need - someone beating the living shit out of them in the name of teaching them good manners and a way to earn an honest livelihood.
Posted by shanti at August 19, 2005 1:22 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.realwomenonline.com/scgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/3286
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Teacher, teacher!:
Looking at the level of delinquency in the US and the falling levels of education, methinks a tight slap or two once in a while would not do anybody any harm.
Posted by: Ck at August 19, 2005 3:22 PM
Level of delinquency? You mean to say kids in US are not attending schools? Facts?
What is it about you that has to bring in the US into every topic being discussed regargless of the relevance? If beating children up and pressuring them into “educated” is working out so good for India, there wouldn’t be so many children killing themselves every time their board exam results or other competetive exam results rolled in. Let us stay on topic here.
Posted by: shanti at August 19, 2005 3:51 PM
I think you should check your facts. I don’t have time currently to provide references for this (these are estimates but well within the ballpark) but from what I understand
11 million children in the US under the age of 13 are currently under medication for clinical depression. Depression!! What the hell does a 10 year old kid have to be so depressed about that he has to take a Prozac every day.
You can also check the statistics for ADD, ADHD - all on the rise.
Its not about beating children up - nobody is advocating that but children do better in an environment in which there are punishments and rewards. The touble with kids in the US today is that there are no punishments. Misbehave at school - you get a written citation. Beat the crap out of one of you schoolmates - you get sent to ‘anger management counseling’ - all a load of bull if you ask me. Nothing that a good box on the ears wouldn’t solve but then the teachers get sued for ‘abuse’.
Extremes on either side are bad, but the in the US they are way to soft on the kids.
Posted by: Ck at August 19, 2005 4:47 PM
Somehow, I think that you can discipline a child well without resorting to throwing lead at their head. I think it can be done…
Posted by: MD at August 21, 2005 4:17 PM
I agree with Shanti. Beating someone weaker than you does nothing to discipline that person, just shows how weak you are. Agreed, a spoilt brat needs his ears boxed now and then when the going gets too tough. But getting all emotional and using your physical strength against a child… heavens, tahts something animals do. And are we to believe that children are born brats? impossible.
Posted by: Debjani at August 22, 2005 6:10 AM
I think many of us have painful memories of similar beatings or scoldings in school. I don’t know what purpose it served, but i do know that I can never even think of hitting a child, and it’s perhaps because of such incidents in childhood.
:-(
Posted by: sunil at August 22, 2005 8:20 PM
Ck, I will not claim education in US is perfect. There are a lot of problems with the system and it is enough material for another post altogether. None of that though, excuses anything that is going on in Indian schools.
MD, Debjani and Sunil, I agree. It kills me to even think about how inured it was in our systems that it was OK to beat up those we didn’t like just because we were minding the classes, since that was the example our teachers were setting us. I am not one for mollycoddling kids, but I draw a line at physical abuse.
Posted by: shanti at August 23, 2005 3:51 PM
Yeah I had very similar experiences btwn the age of 5-10. I think some of it helped and most didn’t and also what struck me was how similar it is to ragging in colleges and the vicious circle that gets propagated. Here’s a link describing one such incident that I went through (links to the description by The Stop Ragging Campaign):
http://shreyasc.blogspot.com/2005/03/ragginghazing-in-colleges.html#comments
Posted by: shreyas at August 24, 2005 2:04 PM