“Mommy, the teacher hit me..” My experiences with corporal punishment

India is a nation that’s more or less united by one common experience: physical abuse in school. Here’s a quick fact: Two out of every three school going children in India have been victims of corporal punishment (Data: Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2007).

That’s insane!

Education is a shared experience; where both parties essentially learn. From the perspective of the educator, it is a very enriching journey to teach kids. I, having been a mentor of my younger brother since a very young age saw this fact for myself. For all the times when I didn’t “spare the rod”, it wasn’t something fulfilling. Those were quick fixes, that didn’t have a good aftertaste either. But for every single time where I stood the tests of my patience, I was rewarded. And thereafter, we’d leave the study table with a strengthened sense of camaraderie apart from a more meaningful “guru-shishya” relation.

I am happy for the fact that my brother was not abused as much as I was in school. The statistics are beginning to shift now (at least in urban areas), with the advent of an increased awareness in society, owing to the internet and mobile revolution.

I am blessed (or cursed?) with an eidetic memory when it comes to self-history. From my lower Kindergarten days, I recollect with a grimace, the horrors perpetrated on young malleable minds and bodies. Especially during the very dreaded Hindi period.

My Hindi teacher used to be a stout lady, with pale skin and fat (I wouldn’t like to call them chubby) cheeks decorated with super bold makeup that I’m pretty sure, would make stewardesses cringe. Her weapon of choice was the wooden scale: 30 cms of length, with edges that became so rounded due to overuse, it wasn’t possible to construct line segments of length>= 29 cms with them. She was feared among my four year old prison-mates, who were often hit hard for the most unsubstantial mistakes.

And then one day, I forgot to bring my Hindi textbook to class. I was brave enough to go and confess this to her. What happened next seems like the aftermath of a car accident. Moments when I felt that time was moving slow, while the little pony on the top of my head was pulled fast and taut, with an unpleasantly loud audio track playing in the background with my teacher as the lead vocalist. The skin on my palms and back suddenly became one with the wooden scale; so suddenly that my palms would go white for some microseconds, and then turn red as a pomegranate with an intense sensation that you’d call pain. I was also taken to other classrooms as a demonstration of a sample punishment, and hit and scolded. The juvenile audience sat silent. This was a common story of a popular private school.

Watching children getting spanked, slapped, belittled and humiliated was almost a daily ritual that felt mainstream until I reached the third grade, when my parents decided to put me into an all girls’ convent school. Interestingly though, I never told them anything about my “checkered past”. I believe many toddlers do not discuss such issues at home as they’re unable to understand the gravity of such incidences.

Well, I myself believe that it is quite a tough job to control wild mobs of children who talk loud, shit their pants, steal lunch money and fancy erasers, throw pencil shavings on a clean classroom floor, don’t complete homework, and forget to bring their books to class (that’s considered a higher order crime in the penal codes of most primary schools). But resorting to physical punitive methods should be reserved only for worst case scenarios, which are rare.

I sometimes watch and analyse people’s behaviours after knowing their past experiences at school or home. Many of my friends who were hit by their parents during Math sessions at home have become individuals whose palms grow sweaty when they’re shopping for vegetables and have to do simple arithmetic. They fear Math. A lot. Many others who were hit in schools have become staunch introverts. In case of girls, a lower affinity for education as a result of sour childhood experiences can translate into tangible effects across generations, with ignorant households, bad economy and poor health.

Going to primary school isn’t an easy job.

I recently saw a viral Watsapp video of a young girl being badly hit while being taught to count with numbers. There’s another popular CCTV footage of a heartless primary school teacher who was captured while repeatedly slapping and pushing a young boy in class. What the society doesn’t realize is that for the moment, the issue at hand may appear to be solved; or the child might just “learn” to babble those words or do that math problem. But in the long run, the same child will detest not only the teacher, but also the subject or even academics altogether. What could have been a session of enlightenment for the student or possibly a rewarding career too, may simply become a subject of fear and ignorance. There’s many more effective techniques to teach things to children that they’ll remember for a lifetime. None of them include violence as a measure.

While I don’t believe that private and government schools currently do or will even distantly care to train their staff about the importance of empathy, but at least guardians can condition themselves to be good to their children. Establishing a friendly bond with their child, sensitising them about physical and sexual abuse is the best foot forward. This ensures that the child is vocal about everyday happenings at school or elsewhere. Being in frequent touch with school authorities is another good idea. That’s a nice way to convey your thoughts about effective punishments in schools.

So the next time you feel it’s getting difficult to train your kid, don’t forget what Frederic Douglass, a slave turned American statesman rightly said: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”.

So, be nice to the kid; he/she will forever love you for this.