Oppression in Second Homes: A Policy Perspective on Schools

A school plays a very important role in molding a child’s developmental years. For many, it’s an escape from chaotic households, while for others, they are doors to endless opportunities.

But recently, we have seen practices of corporal punishments, power distancing, and command - control methods of teaching take the front seat in schools, while basic educational necessities take the back seat. Many students find themselves at the receiving ends of both unhealthy school and home environments, and others become victims or perpetrators of racism, classism, sexism, and competition for marks. Strict behavior policies are an indication of a teacher-centric education system. Here, the system can be beneficial for teachers, however, a school is more about children and a place where students must be given paramount importance. Only when there is a sense of equality, can a fruitful dialogue between teachers and students take place. The lesson of questioning everything gets reversed when students can’t even question teachers or express their inability to understand in class out of fear of mockery.

School learning always comes second to learning from societal norms, like those about not questioning adults. Children are expected to follow elders with utmost devotion, making personal growth a far-fetched dream. When a student is unable to express their opinion or discomfort, the entire purpose of receiving an education gets defeated because education encourages empowerment and not suppression. These practices reduce the chances of a student developing skills like taking initiative, negotiating with others, participating in extracurricular activities, and expressing their opinions in class.

Adding to adolescents’ nightmares, corporal punishments are widely witnessed in schools where students are humiliated or physically punished for the slightest ‘misbehavior’, or an action that may be deemed inappropriate by the concerning authority. In most of the cases, such authorities have no written or systemic jurisdiction for imparting such punishments.

An 8-year old told to do 120 sit-ups for making noise in class, a student’s lips sealed by his teacher for being talkative, a student being caned in assembly for not being in line, are not unheard or isolated events in Indian schools. Ironically, these punishments are always justified; that they were given for the child’s own benefit and for their best interest - the main objective being a prohibition of recurrence of bad behavior.

Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Child, 1989 (UNCRC) declares that any form of discipline involving violence is unacceptable. It lays down the right of children to be protected from being hurt and mistreated physically or mentally. Further, it says that governments should ensure that children are properly cared for and safeguarded from violence, abuse, and neglect by the parents or anyone else who looks after them. Under the Indian Constitution, violence against children is a violation of the right to live with dignity, which is an integral part of the right to life under article 21. Corporal punishment serves as a deterrent to children from attending school and contributes to dropout rates. This goes against the right to education as a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution.

Set up in March 2007, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) by the Government of India, has circulated certain guidelines for eliminating corporal punishments, under which every school is entitled to develop a mechanism and frame clear-cut protocols to address grievances of children. Dropboxes are to be placed where students can submit anonymous feedback; this is to be maintained in a way that it also protects the privacy of students. However, in spite of all the laws present, the practice of physically punishing children continues unabated, regardless of its efficacy in discipline enforcement. People like to believe in the old age dictum – ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, there is no proof of beaten and bruised children growing up into responsible citizens any more than those who were spared the rod and brought up in a loving and nurturing environment. A conversation is not substitutable for a rod.

The usage of Corporal punishment as a technique for discipline is very unhealthy. Discipline should teach teenagers that there are logical and natural consequences to all our behaviors. However, physically punishing and hurting children only makes them fear committing mistakes, which will bring the same pain and shame, because a person who makes no mistakes, learns too little. It causes them to seek revenge, harbor resentment, lose trust and respect for the teacher who physically punishes them, and even lead them to seek violent means of retribution.

A recent trend that has developed in schools is the ‘power distance’, where students are discouraged to call seniors for help. They are discouraged to question teachers because of the presence of a pre-existing notion, according to which, whatever the teacher teaches is enough and failure to understand it is the child’s responsibility. With this what also persists is gender segregation between male and female students, which can be very patriarchal and gender insensitive, while ousting the existence of other genders together. We have seen students not wanting to go to school out of fear of not having completed their homework or not carrying enough project material, or simply fearing the wrath of a certain teacher.

With daily ongoing crises, together with relationships at home, with friends, tests, examinations, the stress of co-curricular activities, tuitions, boards, and entrances, how will this pressure cooker not burst? Or how long will it hold everything together? The answer is complicated, but definitely cannot be inclusive of violence.

But there are solutions – promotion of equality to create a dialogue between students and teachers for students to feel safe, sensitization of teachers towards child rights, gender equality and mental health, elimination of corporal punishments and similar unjust practices, government policies should be firmly implemented and obediently followed. More dialogue on stress, depression in general, and coping mechanisms, in particular, is important, especially by encouraging school students to seek free professional help. Our education system must always be well equipped to incorporate contemporary thoughts and ideas.

References-

https://www.rc.org/page/featuredrecent/pt172_053_mp#:~:text=The%20oppressive%20system%20is%20the,young%20people%20feel%20not%20smart.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/18/how-strict-is-too-strick-great-yarmouth-academy-smile

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/cels/essays/languageteaching/LanguageTeachingMethodologyMichikoKasuya.pdf

http://www.legalservicesindia.com/articles/punish.htm

http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model

By-

Vaidehi Tripathi

(99vaidehitripathi@gmail.com)