This Corporal Punishment thing…

By anthony sylvestre

Reasonable chastisement of children by parents or others is lawful at common law. It seems almost incomprehensible then, that this boiling debate about corporal punishment has come to this; with the Minister of Education condescendingly calling the teachers names, amongst other things, being “ignorant”.

Anyone who has been in the classroom fulltime for a little while (myself, I taught for three years) will readily tell you that classroom management is the most critical part of teaching. You can prepare all the lesson plans with the most creative and ingenious ways to impart lessons, but the inability of a teacher to properly manage the students’ roller coaster emotions, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, ‘subduedness,’ disruptiveness, mischievousness, inquisitiveness and the like make the job of teaching nightmarish. Lump onto this the already heady and heavy responsibility of teaching, the fact that in the classroom, in real time, the teacher has to be a counselor and psychologist, who must on her feet quickly assess a student who is sleeping or daydreaming or slouching in class and not only realize something is wrong, but act. Being able to give of herself to those (at the very least) twenty or so students in this way is demanding and if you think of it, it is a little undue hardship, to the students and the teachers.  The students may never get the full attention of the teacher, and the teacher will never be able to give her all to all the students all the time. Rather than being “ignorant” then, the teacher more than anyone is knowledgeable about deficiencies in classroom management.

Within this context then, it becomes apparent that the teacher in the classroom must have the utility to chastise a student if she is to adequately manage the classroom – which brings me to this matter of corporal punishment which has consumed our national consciousness of late. I think even the little toddler in pre-school is fully aware of this heated tug & war about corporal punishment. But all of us, it seems, have our own idea of what corporal punishment is. Listening to the talk-shows and people speaking generally about the issue, most think of corporal punishment as the “lashing” or “chancing” of a child. But that is not what corporal punishment is defined as in the law; specifically, in that new Education & Training Act that was passed in the House of Representative last Friday.

Corporal punishment in the new law refers to “anything done to a child for the purpose of punishing a child (whether or not there are other reasons for doing it) which apart from any justification, would constitute a battery.”  It’s a mouthful that needs to be broken down and analyzed.

To put it plainly, the new law is saying that a teacher cannot punish or chastise a student if that punishment is a battery. And battery (not the kind those Jamaican dancehall artists sing about) is said to be committed when you, without the other person’s consent, and with the intention to cause him pain, fear or annoyance, forcibly touch him.

That sounds to me that a teacher cannot hereafter pat a student on his shoulder and tell him to behave himself. And it doesn’t have to be a hard pat on the student’s shoulder either. The law says that the slightest touch suffices if the intention was to put the student in fear. That teacher could now be charged with a criminal offence. I don’t know about you, but that just sounds like craziness to me. What is a teacher to do now then?

And therein lies the teachers’ legitimate grouse and the reason for their protest in Belmopan last Friday. I think a great many teachers, particular in the primary school, have had to, at some point, go up to a student and correct him by tapping the student and tell him to behave or chill out. To suggest that type of class room discipline is barbaric and needs to be abolished is as crazy as the definition of corporal punishment in the new law. Which has me wondering, by the way: was any actual study done to find out to what extent corporal punishment has been abused by teachers in Belize, if at all? Seems to me that the Minister of Education here (to paraphrase Hon. Cordel Hyde) is transplanting first world norms without regards to our third world realities.

I agree with the teachers: a little more time was needed to flesh out these details. Issues such as the definition of the word “corporal punishment” may seem superficial or trivial to many who are not in the classroom, but for those 5,000 plus teachers it is a matter of their safety and effective classroom management. Corporal punishment as defined in this new law will put a further strain on teachers. It will make their classroom management more difficult. It will in the end, create more undue hardship on the teachers. That can only, in the final analysis, have a negative correlative effect on the students.

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