Treating students with respect

Amidst the political turmoil in our country, this little story headlined Student alleges sexual assault by teacher appeared in Malaysiakini. For the benefit of those without a subscription, a Form 2 student claims her male teacher physically assaulted and sexually abused her in front of her classmates—and when she reported it, the discipline teacher told her to keep the matter a secret. She told her parents, who confronted the principal—but the principal claimed the teacher had only scolded the girl for not bringing her Malay grammar book to school.

Sexual and physical abuse is a clearcut issue, so let's talk about a related problem: discipline. I am not opposed to caning in the household or in school; I think used properly, the cane can reinforce a good lesson. But the problem is, caning is difficult to do responsibly. And the reason it is hard to cane responsibly is that it is hard to discipline young people responsibly.

A big problem with expecting schools to enforce discipline is that it is hard to respect children and young adults as people who have their own thoughts and feelings. I've attended many different schools, all of which had their own approaches to discipline. But in almost every case, I think the approach would have been very different if the teachers had been dealing with someone their own age and size, instead of someone younger and smaller than them.

You can argue that young primary schoolchildren need harsh discipline; I am inclined to disagree, but I can accept that. What I cannot accept is the idea that young adults in secondary school still need to be scolded and caned like primary schoolchildren for things like forgetting their books. How is this supposed to reinforce the lesson? These are young adults who are already in a position to think for themselves. If canings and harsh scoldings are supposed to work on young adults, why don't bosses cane their subordinates?

Yes, there are bosses who do yell at their employees, and there are some who even beat them. The latter is illegal, and the former is just bad business. It may be better to be feared than to be loved, but you should at least be feared for the right reasons.

I think a lot about my primary school headmistress when it comes to the question of fear, because everyone in my primary school was deathly afraid of her. I can't remember ever seeing her cane anyone; she never even yelled at anyone. There was just something in her demeanour which told us she meant business, and that she would not look kindly upon anyone who let her down. If you did let her down, you would get a stern talking to from her, but she wouldn't beat you up. She wouldn't shout at you. She would tell you what you had done wrong, and what she expected from you—and you would scurry away, tail tucked firmly between your legs, knowing you never wanted to get another such talk from her again.

The difference is that my headmistress knew that people will respect you when you first respect them (a lesson some politicians on both sides of the aisle could learn). She treated us as responsible people who knew what was right and wrong, even though we were just primary schoolkids. She made us feel shamed, not because we had been punished, but because we had let her and let ourselves down. That is the kind of shame and fear which works. This is why my headmistress was both feared and loved.

Because so many teachers do not understand that fear and love have to go hand-in-hand, we get incidents of teachers beating up and humiliating pupils. While this might work in the short run, it eventually makes school even more unpleasant for students, and makes them even more disinclined to learn.

I am presently reading a book by actor Keith Johnstone—a former teacher who hated school. One fantastic observation Johnstone makes is that we misunderstand the difference between good and bad teachers. Education, he points out, is not a quantity, of which good teachers dole out a lot, and bad teachers only a little. Good teachers, he says, really make you learn. Bad teachers really make you unlearn. This strikes me as true in a variety of ways, but I cannot think of an area where this applies more than discipline. Good teachers give you lessons in discipline which last for life; bad teachers only wind up making you even worse off than you were before.

More disciplinary issues

Following on our posts on the student slapping incident here and here, the Star reported two incidents - that a student slapping headmaster in KK had been suspended for 2 months (with full pay) for slapping some 20 students for not handing in their civics homework and that a warden in a school in Sibu forced some students to stand in a fish pond for 30 minutes for clogging up the toilets with their sanitary pads.

I found this old report in the Straits Times Singapore on corporal punishment and I thought that it brings up some good points.

Straits Times, Singapore, 6 October 2003
Abdullah supports using cane in school
But the DPM also cautions against abuse should the Education Ministry expand caning powers to control unruly students

By Reme Ahmad
in Kuala Lumpur

SPARE the rod and spoil the child? Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would seem to agree.

He has concurred with an Education Ministry's proposal to expand the power of caning students to all teachers, instead of just the disciplinary masters and principals.

This followed shocking cases of fighting among students, and reports quoting a ministry official saying that 76,300 students had disciplinary problems, including gangsterism, last year.

But Datuk Seri Abdullah said care must be taken to avoid abuse, and he suggested more discussions between parents and schools before implementing the move in the classroom or during school assemblies.

'I personally would not stop the ministry from implementing caning in schools as long as it is not excessive,' he said.

'We know that children normally fear caning, either in school or at home.

'I agree with caning but there is concern that if all teachers are given the power, there will be excessive caning,' he said in Ipoh on Saturday, in response to questions from reporters.

Yesterday, Datuk Seri Abdullah added that he wants teachers to be trained as counsellors to help troubled students.

The ministry had in 1997 ruled that only principals and discipline masters could use the rod.

But its director-general, Datuk Abdul Rafie Mahat, said recently that all teachers should be allowed to discipline those in their classes. It proposed giving canes to all teachers, amid reports of ill discipline and fighting among groups of students.

A student nearly lost his wrist just two weeks ago after being slashed in a fight between two groups of 22 students in Perak.

This was just days after 12 students ganged up to beat a schoolmate at a matriculation hostel in Malacca.

These two incidents were widely reported in the media and raised alarm bells among educators, parents and government officials.

Malaysian officials, however, were quick to point out that the 76,300 problematic students were less than 1.2 per cent of the total student population of seven million nationwide. Many felt the cane should be used sparingly.

National Unity and Community Development Minister Siti Zaharah Sulaiman said yesterday that children should be caned only in serious cases.

Punishment is a last resort, added a columnist in Mingguan Malaysia newspaper.

Perak's education director, Datuk Adnan Ibrahim, said teachers would use the cane sparingly because they 'fear parents making police reports and the issue being brought to courts and causing problems'.

If this report is still relevant, then public caning in schools is still allowed. What is unclear is what the guidelines are in regards to carrying out this type of corporal punishment.

I've said this before and I'll say it again here. I think there is a place for public caning in our schools but it should be carried out in a way which follows procedure strictly e.g. there should be strict guidelines in regards to the types of offenses that qualify for public caning such as the destruction of school property, public fighting, gross disrespect shown towards teachers or headmasters and so on. I think that slapping students have no place in a classroom since it can be meted out in a way which can be irrational and prone to sudden impulses.

In regards to the other minor offenses such as failure to hand in homework, it's much harder to 'legislate' for such punishment and I think we should leave it up to the wisdom of the teachers and headmasters of the individual schools.