When President Maithripala Sirisena speaks, everyone listens. Last week
he spoke on corporal punishment. He justified instances of teachers and
principals losing their temper and then went on to note that they, being
the flawed humans they are, must be cut some slack on account of the
impossibility of handling more than 30 students at the same time in one
class. He could have said more, but he did not. Not surprisingly
perhaps, he said all this as part of a speech delivered at a teacher's
felicitation ceremony held at Nelum Pokuna.
This week's column is not about whether the President of a modern
democracy can or must deliver such speeches. It's about whether the fact
that teachers are as human as you and I are should shield them from
legal reforms when it comes to the upbringing of children. There's a
literature that spans decades and even centuries over this area.
Meanwhile, commentators from both sides of the divide have spoken
vociferously and have, for the lack of a better way of putting it,
simplified that divide in terms of the East / West dichotomy that
dictates the thrust of debates over more compelling socio-political
issues.
Which is why, when examining a topic as contentious as corporal
punishment (in schools), one must privilege reason and look at what each
side has to say. Some say that it contributes to a culture of strict,
ramrod discipline. Others say that it marginalizes those who are by
nature errant as students, who can only be moulded by less harsh
methods. Few, very few in fact, look beyond the rhetoric of debate and
base their arguments on tested, empirical evidence.
Corporal punishment
Before delving into that evidence though, what are the arguments and the
perspectives? More importantly, what is the issue? It is the corporal
punishment, of course. But what does that term indicate? In a broad
sense, it includes all forms of punishment (mental and physical)
inflicted on a student for an infringement of a preconceived rule. It's
usually touted as a last resort, but more often than not is resorted to
whenever and wherever a teacher loses his or her temper over the
student's intransigence.
The problem is compounded when we think of the role of the teacher.
Teachers, in the most basic sense, are considered as taking the place of
the parent (or in legal parlance, 'in loco parentis'). In other words,
if corporal punishment is considered the norm inside the house, then it
is considered a norm inside the school. Long considered the most
immediate and quick method of enforcing discipline, it's easy to see how
and why, regardless of the point that at law and in principle it's the
last resort, it's used frequently: in the absence of other more
expedient measures, it guarantees compliance at once.
In Sri Lanka, corporal punishment traces its origins to the Penal Code
of 1883, Article 82 of which absolves a guardian (or any person acting
as such lawfully) when he or she inflicts punishment on a child, if that
act of inflicting the punishment is committed 'in good faith.'
Now
'in good faith' is probably one of the most vague legal phrases out
there, but for the purposes of my column this much will suffice: despite
the later reforms which invaded the Penal Code (not least being Article
308A, which explicitly provided for the offence of cruelty against
children), there were subtle exceptions that shielded teachers whenever
they chose to inflict punishment (Article 314, for instance, which is
about the offence of 'criminal force', conveniently inserts a caveat: a
schoolmaster in the 'reasonable exercise of his discretion as master'
who flogs a student is not, for all intents and purposes, committing
that offence).
Schizophrenic attitude
I believe that this concurrent, schizophrenic attitude of support for
and opposition to corporal punishment probably explains why the
contemporary discourse on it is soconfusing. It has become so
schizophrenic that commentators from both sides of the divide have
sustained a stark, black-and-white dichotomy when it comes to the
debate.
How does this dichotomy go? It's simple. If you support corporal
punishment, you are an outdated, unenlightened savage who hasn't kept up
with the times. If you oppose corporal punishment, you are a
Westernized, enlightened gentleman who privileges the dignity of the
child over the greater, collective good. That this dichotomy is as
simplistic as the moral triumph of John Keating in "Dead Poets Society",
and that it has served to blur the intricacies of the debate even more,
we should not doubt.
Which brings me to another more pertinent point: What exactly are the
arguments for and against caning, flogging, kneeling down, and other
forms of physical punishment?
Briefly put, those who oppose corporal punishment see it in terms of the
dignity of the child. Children are wayward. They make mistakes and that
has less to do with intention than with an underdeveloped
mentality.Among the responses I managed to collect on this point, some
were quite vociferous: just as children need to be corrected, that does
not absolve. Far from being perfect, these teachers can be and are
flawed, which cogently explains how students who committed no crime can,
in the general order of things, be punished and flogged by mistake.
Vociferous response
No less a person than the President (in that aforementioned speech) gave
an instance where he had been caned for a mistake committed by another
student. The most vociferous response to this came from a friend of
mine, who quite eloquently said when such instances of punishment for
uncommitted crimes go unnoticed, they add to a society in which even
upholders of the law either punish innocents or blow relatively trivial
crimes out of proportion and torture the offenders.
That is correct. One need only sheaf through Basil Fernando's harrowing
"Narrative of Justice in Sri Lanka" to realize that this country is
chock-a-block with glaring instances of injustice and disproportionate
punishment meted out against innocents.
The message given to students when they are punished out of proportion,
quite obviously, is that there shouldn't be recourse to appeal when
authority is involved, or in other words, that authority figures are
beyond reproach and hence, even if a crime was not committed, some past
sin may have compelled the student to be pulled up and punished (the
reference to past sins takes a new dimension when considering the
attitude of compliance fostered in Sri Lanka, perhaps a result of the
privileged status of Buddhism and multiculturalism).
Do these arguments indicate in any way the primeval, sadistic urges of
those who mete out such punishments? Not necessarily. It's reasonable to
surmise that far from enjoying the infliction of those punishments, the
teachers involved are driven by an honest desire to retain discipline
and efficiency in an institution which is by default run on uniformity
and standardized procedures. That however doesn't license the continuity
of harsh sanctions thrown at students, if such sanctions result in
their dignity being compromised on considerably. In simpler terms, we
can conclude: The discourse against corporal punishment has mainly to do
with the individuality of the child.
Caning and floggings
The arguments for it, by comparison, are more colourful and varied.
Responses on this count range from 'If I were not caned, I would not be
where I am today' or 'The teacher punished me for a reason, which made
me a better human being' to 'Children need to be disciplined in order to
adapt them for the life to come after school.' 'Spare the rod and spoil
the child' is a frequently quoted line tossed out to justify caning and
floggings, while the discourse against them is generally pooh-poohed on
the grounds that it's a 'Western disease' (that is not a term I made up
and that is a term that a distinguished writer and commentator used to
defend those for punishment).
The main problem with these arguments, one can correctly infer, is that
they are coloured by an artificial dichotomy between the East and the
West. In other words, those for corporal punishment think that their
opponents are Westernized and are considered more 'enlightened' than
them. That helps explain why they believe that corporal punishment is a
Sri Lankan (or 'Eastern') method of instilling discipline, or why they
believe that its abolition in the West (in particular, Britain and the
United States) has led to a deterioration of values (whatever that
means) in that part of the world.
This compels two points or problems.
Education system
The first is the assertion that our educational system from its
inception privileged caning and other forms of physical punishment is
only half-true. Historical records do not show whether our Pirivenas
ever institutionalized caning and flogging the way they have been today.
In fact one of the biggest myths surrounding this side of the debate is
that caning is endemic to Sri Lanka and other Asian countries. While
the ramrod austerity of Confucianism can explain the rigidity of the
educational systems in East Asian countries, that hardly explains the
contemporary fascination with corporal punishment here.
The second is while historical records do not bear out the view of these
commentators over Pirivenas institutionalizing physical punishment,
they do point at how those who invaded this country privileged caning,
flogging, and kneeling down as preferred sanctions for errors and crimes
in the classroom. More than the Portuguese and the Dutch, it was the
British who pioneered the modern educational system in Sri Lanka. Until
their arrival, we were complete strangers to the concept of public
schools: needless to say, it is in these public schools that the image
of the bespectacled, old principal holding the rattan cane was first
formed.
Let's not forget, after all, that the sections in the penal code
absolving teachers were authored by Englishmen, not 'natives.' Let's not
also forget that inasmuch as various circulars issued by those in
charge of education policy here (in particular, the circulars of 1907
and of 1927, the latter being the first such issued by the Education
Department on the subject) regulated the use of the cane and limited it
to glaring instances of indiscipline, calls for abolition came much,
much later, and could hardly be said to be 'Westernized.' That is why
some believe that the culture of caning students excessively, like our
puritanical attitude to sex and divorce, was a result of 'enlightened'
laws drafted by Victorian men.
The debate
I suppose this makes the debate a tad easier to end: Are you for a
system of laws written and enforced by Victorians, however enlightened
they may have been, or are you for the calls for reform made by bodies
that have evolved considerably from the Victorian era? Or in still other
words, would you prefer to remain Westernized in the Victorian sense of
that term or Westernized in the modern, civilized sense of that term? I
abhor such simplifications, but for purposes of clarity I suspect that
is what makes out for the ultimate resolution of this debate.
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