There is a shocking case out of India, where Shanno Khan, 11, was punished by her teacher who forced her to stand in hot sun for two hours as she begged for water. She collapsed in a coma and later died at the hospital.
The teacher denies the allegation that she was being punished and blamed her epilepsy. Yet, the incident has struck a cord in India where a recent report found that teachers used corporal punishment on 65% of the students.
The teacher was allegedly upset because she had not learned her alphabet properly and her sisters say that the last thing she said was “I never want to go to school again.”
While we occasionally have such heat related deaths in the United States, the incidence of brutal punishment of children in school is a global problem.
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Former,
First, there is a difference between spanking for a fight and murdering for not learning.
Second, while spanking may be sufficient for some children, it is never necessary and often leads to more behavioral problems such as withdrawal and using physical means to solve problems, rather than using one’s words to solve them.
I was never spanked or punished once as a child. My mother would tell me why what I did was bad for me to continue to do, or at the worst tell me that I lose a privilege, and I turned out fine, too. If you are using your logic of one = the whole, my turning out fine is evidence enough that spanking is never, ever needed. In reality, other children may need some kind of punishment, but spanking is abusive. Anything that would be illegal if you did it to an adult should not be legal or morally correct to use on children.
I don’t believe that corporal punishment is automatically child abuse, although I don’t really use it on my own three (very well behaved children) – but this post isn’t about corporal punishment. It’s about torture of children, pure and simple.
Correcting a child’s behavior is one thing, but punishing a child for not learning something properly or quickly enough is uncalled for.
I’ve been a teacher for several years, and I have never (not once) heard any teacher express a longing for corporal punishment in the schools. Greater discipline, yes. Greater parental involvement in correcting behavior, yes. A return to striking children, never.
C.L. et al.
I entered the first grade in the mid-1950s. I was a good kid, although I was a bit rambunctious and I did not back down. Not long after I started school and just after recess, while I was walking up the steps to class, I got in a minor scuffle with a bully who snapped my prized Davy Crockett suspenders. We both went to the principal’s office and we both got a spanking with a wooden paddle.
I deserved every minor detention and bottom swatting that I ever received in school for rowdy behavior and the extra ‘punishment’ meted in sports and the military; I did not turn out to be a criminal, petty or otherwise. Discipline is critical and I think that some of the many problems we have with crime today is partially because parents and teachers did not administer correct, but stern discipline. Commonsensical people know the difference between child abuse and swats on the backside and/or a stern dressing-down.
I knew basic right-from-wrong from age 6-years-old and I just needed ‘encouragement’ to follow all of the rules and I knew that consequences awaited me if I insisted on getting my way all of the time.
I think children are often punished in cruel ways by teachers and parents. I would be willing to bet that in many countries, children experience worse torture, relative to their mental and physical capacity, than many adult victims of torture. The teachers have full control over these children.
Did not we have a situation in Arizona where a 14 year old child died. It was a boot camp for incorrigible young boys. I think it occurred in 2003.
Pardon me?
I always thought young children really were not yet fully developed in the brain department and so I isnt even about good or bad children but brain development. Adults can be dumber than a mule when it comes to raising children.
The “teacher” of course should have spent those 2 hours working with the child on the alphabet. That’s not a teacher, but a punisher, a torturer.
It’s sad how often I hear teachers at my school wish for corporal punishment. Some label the 6-8 year old kids ‘bad’ rather than the choices the kids make.