Corporal Punishment at school- A First hand experience

Author: Ashok Murthy
Country: India

“Spare the rod and spoil the child”, how many million times did our society use this popular quotation to justify the beating up for a poor, unarmed and dependent tiny kid, all in the name of discipline.

Going to school was never an enjoyable experience for me. I attended only two days of lower kindergarten class and didn’t write an exam to pass. This was how my first year was spent.

The experience started in the Upper Kindergarten class. As a rule, whenever a child spoke or whenever the class was noisy, it used to first start with making us stand on the bench and hold up our hands. While we stood in this position, holding both hands straight up, the teacher patiently went about doing her work. After two hours of painful standing, the teacher issued the command to lower our hands. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Then she asked us to fold our palms and make a knuckle out of it and hold out straight out horizontally. She grabbed a wooden cane and with utmost care and precision went about whipping our knuckles with the wooden cane, two whips per person. If one tried to retract, it would be four whips. At the end of the day it was going home with bruised knuckles. From my part, I used to end up crying almost all the time while going to school in the morning and while coming back from school in the afternoon.

During my course at that school, punishment most commonly involved hitting the student with wooden scales, canes and in other cases making the student take off his shirt and sit on the cold cement floor.

In high school, it involved kneeling down on rough surfaces and walking for twenty minutes or more holding the ears with both the hands for talking in the line, not polishing one’s shoes or for not having a hair cut. The physical training teachers often used to kick us if we couldn’t march like seasoned armymen. One of my classmates almost lost his hearing because of one misguided cane hitting him on the ear instead of the ribs.

Under the circumstances it was but natural for me to not want to go to school. This was usually met by ridicule by family members saying I was too pampered because my own parents never laid a hand on me.

More often than not, if a victim of the beating was consoled by some other classmate, that particular classmate would be singled out at the end of the hour and beaten up again. During PUC (11th and 12th) it was less beating up and more humiliation. Genuinely sick people used to be called liars for coughing and we used to get a whack on our heads by the disciplinary co-ordinator if we were found talking to our classmates during free hours.

From my part, I felt the most pure and genuine hatred for those teachers who indulged in this act. In instances I would fantasize beating them back until they turned blue. While this thought brought a smile on my face, while I was still in the line during P.T class, it followed up with a beating. That is right, we got hit even for smiling.

The effects, well, during my primary school days, my confidence took a serious hit and I was very quiet and hardly talked to people. For most part, I was frustrated because being so small and tiny and unarmed, I couldn’t do anything. But mostly it was anger and hatred.

Today if any child were to face what I or my elder brother had to face, I would not bother talking to the concerned lecturer or teacher. I would end up at the college with a legal notice and take the teachers to the court.

The common mistakes parents of such victims make is that they don't even confront the concerned teacher. It is normally the fear that subsequent to the confrontation, their child will be singled out unnecessarily. In the process several other children end up facing the same treatment.

Edmund Burke once remarked that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Generations have had to deal with physical abuse at school and in many instances, children have dropped out of school because of the fear of such teachers.

Some of the recent events have included a teacher gouging out a student’s eyes with a pen for not doing his homework, a boy being beaten unconscious for talking during class and a girl being forced to strip in class for not doing her homework. While teachers once symbolised guides and parents outside the home, today they are more commonly associated with unruly and uncivilised actions. While literacy is our country’s top priority, such teachers often are a detriment to the cause of education and act more in contravention of the rules than in imbibing a sense of responsibility to the students. Let us not encourage such people by staying quiet. If your child or your ward is a subject of such abuse, at least be responsible enough to take action and lodge a complaint. You could prevent another student from losing his eyes for not doing his or her homework. The law supports you, exercise your rights and help save a childhood.

Conquer the world

Author: Waed Sweilmyeen
Country: Jordan


On top of the world, like nothing is missing….
You think you have it all….
You have done the impossible….
Yet you can't let go of me….
You keep running back to me….
No matter how far you go, I am the home you long to see….

You are sad, angry, frustrated but when I am at your finger tips every thing changes….
You blow the sadness, the anger, the frustration into me….

You are happy, thrilled, almost floating….
Almost!
But when I am at your finger tips this changes….
You think you are truly, completely floating.

I am a part of your experience, a part of every thing you do and feel!!

You are a conqueror!
You think you are… You think you conquered the world.
But you keep forgetting that I conquer the conqueror within you….

I, the thin wrapped paper of tobacco, conquered most of you, surprisingly with your consent; you so called strong conquerors…


A cigarette forced so many to follow it no matter what….
It is time for those "so many" to get rid of the pack and restore authority over themselves once again….