Publicité
Should we allow teachers to use ?reasonable force? in classrooms?
Par
Partager cet article
Should we allow teachers to use ?reasonable force? in classrooms?
In her book, Our primary education, an overview and analysis of the Mauritian education system, that was officially launched on 4th October, Attorney at law Marie Lourdes Lam Hung writes that teachers should have the right ?to discipline pupils and use reasonable force to restrain difficult pupils?.
An amendment to the legislation should be introduced to allow teachers to do this. ?Indiscipline is a serious growing concern at school. Due to the problem of indiscipline, classes are disrupted and students cannot concentrate on their studies. There is little time for teaching and learning and teachers are not motivated to work?, argues Marie Lourdes Lam Hung.
The subject is a very sensitive one. If teachers in general and even the trade unions ? for example, the Government Teachers? Union and the Government Hindi Teachers? Union ? seem in favour of such an amendment, the education authorities don?t share the same view.
The minister of Education, Vasant Bunwaree, is clearly not in favor of using force to maintain discipline in classrooms.
?One cannot be an advocate of non-violence and ask the right to use violence on children at the same time?, he said during the launching ceremony. The same view was expressed by Gilberte Chung, director of the Bureau de l?education catholique (BEC). ?We support dialogue and we listen when a child is aggressive. Our experience shows that the children can be put on the right track without the use of violence.? The former minister of Education, Dharam Gokhool, was also against the reintroduction of corporal punishment.
Support for caning</B>
Many teachers seem somehow in favour of using more extreme measures to keep order. ?Students are very aware of what a teacher has the right to do and not to do. They know we cannot do more than speaking loud. So they just do what they want to. I?m certainly not in favor of using violence but we should be allowed to be tougher sometimes. We should know where to draw the line?, says a secondary school teacher working in a difficult State college.
Marie Lourdes Lam Hung points out that in many countries, a certain form of discipline is being reintroduced. ?In England, the Education & a Inspection Act 2006, explicitly states that teachers have the right to use reasonable physical force to restrain, control or remove unruly and disruptive pupils in class.?
In fact, in England, caning was only abolished, in all schools and for all children, ten years ago. This was made possible because of the campaigning of the Society of teachers opposed to physical punishment (STOPP), a small group of committed teachers.
But even by STOPP fighting for abolition, polls showed that during the mid-eighties, more than 60% of parents supported caning, 50% of teachers were in favour of it, and two-thirds of children were in schools that practised it. And there was a strong opposition against abolition. In 1986, the amendment introduced to abolish corporal punishment in State schools only was passed in the House of Commons by one vote.
In fact, for most of the 20th century, inflicting physical punishment was viewed as an acceptable means of ensuring cooperation of school children. And a lot of parents had experience of corporal punishment. So it was seen as a natural way to maintain discipline in classrooms. Until now, in England, there?s still a strong lobby for the introduction of corporal punishment. In 2005, four Christian schools went to the Privy Council arguing for their right to retain corporal punishment with parental consent. They lost their case. England was, however, the last European country to abolish caning ? 200 years after Poland, 128 years after Italy and 108 years after Japan.
Publicité
Publicité
Les plus récents
