Trinidad Ministry of Education: 'Bring back the whip'

A REPORT to combat violence and indiscipline in the nation's schools has recommended the reintroduction of corporal punishment as one of the immediate measures to be implemented by the Ministry of Education.

Education Minister Hazel Manning, in releasing the report yesterday at the Hilton Trinidad, said Prof Ramesh Deosaran, author of the report, was commissioned to research the growing trend of indiscipline in schools and come up with the necessary solutions.

Manning said the rush by the previous administration to provide secondary school places for all students in 2000 had contributed significantly to the current crisis in which pupils were entering a system inadequately prepared and the teachers were not trained to attend to their needs.

She added that poor leadership in the management of some schools, teacher absenteeism, along with unpunctuality resulting in unsupervised students for long periods contributed to the problem.

Manning also saw the scenario in which social and domestic issues overflow from the home into the classroom, poor physical school environment, including the lack of proper equipment and supplies and inadequate school security as parts of the problem.

The Deosaran report recommended that corporal punishment, governed by strict controls and conditions, "be put in place for its use in schools for a three-year period, during which time a close study will be made of its efficacy and consequences for both teachers and students".

"We cannot be guided purely by foreign research, nor by ungrounded philosophy, not when the teachers, parents and even students believe that at least the threat, if not the actual use, of corporal punishment is a deterrent to many students.

"Of course, corporal punishment should not be seen as the only method of student control; but as part, in fact an extreme and rarely used part, of achieving classroom management and student discipline," the report stated.

Deosaran conceded that the "policy and practice of corporal punishment in schools has been and still is quite bothersome. We note that the teachers and parents we consulted, almost unanimously (ie, except two out of 145), supported the practice of corporal punishment in schools, but with 'some controls'."

Manning said that the Ministry "will continue to implement the recommendations of the report" and the benchmarks provided will allow the Ministry to scientifically monitor the effectiveness of the strategies. She pleaded with the media to support the initiative.

I believe that most of the new batch of teachers and I myself am speaking as a young teacher, seem uninterested in creating a value system within the schools. They usually show up to work, then leave as soon as possible and in my opinion, do not take the business of affecting young minds seriously.
Discipline therefore, in any form is not not a priority for them. I myself have never had to resort to anything physical. I have used psychological means, or social control. Children fear being humiliated in front of their peers. I also treat them as equals up to a point, however they know I am the leader. They know I expect a certain type of behaviour and any deviation is unacceptable. I am young and some of them are bigger than me in size, so I had to maneuver in such a manner in which I would be taken seriously. Because let's face it...this generation is different from those of the past.

There must be a set of values emanating firstly out of the administration, then to the teachers who should transfer this to the students. Teaching is not only about imparting information from books. It is so much more. It is an art.

by institutionalizing children in schools at such a young age we have radically altered our inherent relationships with them, and in turn, have created problems that did not exist before

if you think about it, compulsory education is a massive experiment in social engineering, taking children from the context of a highly individualized approach to learning, through working with the parents and others in the extended family and community, to a highly impersonable standardized environment in which the knowledge taught often has little relevance to a student's actual life

some students may excel in this kind of environment, but many do not - in the US and Canada for example, the shift towards an increasingly academic environment (i.e. focus on the three "Rs") has left behind a huge group of students, primarily boys, spawning a huge increase in the convenient (mis)diagnosis of attention deficit / hyperactive disorder (AD/HD) and other behavioural problems

many of the students that fail at school don't have an academic bent because they fundamentally learn differently and have natural abilities in other areas, some of which used to be highly valued by humans, such as an enhanced spatial-kinesthetic awareness that makes for excellent hunting skills, as well as things like athletics, dance and movement

is it better we should drug these children while we can, so they cease to be a "problem," or truly find a way to allow them to be the best they can be? perhaps in some kind of desparate sense of colonial justice maybe we should beat these students until they finally succumb? yes, i am sure this is how we create a peaceful and happy society

but what exactly IS the goal of public education? a skeptic might say that over several years of indoctrination during childhood and adolescence the purpose of education is to create another drone to fuel the economy, to fulfill an arbitrary set of modern "values" and corporate "goals" that inspires our investment in this "work-a-day" world

but when students are chronically bored, frustrated, uninspired, angry, scared, or confused, all stuffed together forming puerile social cliques, customs and rituals in the vacuum of a truly knowledge-wealthy society that values an enlightened interdependence, we begin to see ugly behaviours, some even resembling the ugly dynamics seen in the "Lord of the Flies," or suitable for viewing on the very popular television show "Cops"

our job as parents is to raise happy, healthy, creative, intelligent, insightful, knowledgeable, strong and skilled children - this is opposite to the goals of any standardized public education system, which teaches nothing but conformity or failure, which for at least a third of students is the latter

unless of course the goal of life sitting in a little cubicle staring at computer screen, popping antidepressants and legal psychotropic drugs, making so much money we can afford to buy a tiny little cubicle close to work and spend our leisure time watching our Very Expensive Home Entertainment Systems telling us how we each need a bigger cubicle and more things to put in it...

toddcaldecott

“Concerning the advancement of learning, I do subscribe to the opinion… that, for grammar schools, there are already too many… the great number of schools which are in your Highness’s realm doth cause a want, and likewise an overthrow [surfeit] – both of them inconvenient and one of them dangerous; for by means thereof they find want in the country and towns, both of servants for husbandry and of apprentices for trade; and on the other side there being more Scholars bred than the State can prefer and employ… it must needs fall out that many persons will be bred unfit for other vocations and unprofitable for that in which they were bred up, which will fill the realm full of indigent, idle and wanton people…
Francis Bacon, 1611 letter to James I. I happen to be in agreement with Bacon here - admission to advanced education should be by merit competition only. And since incentive, motivation and discipline all have to be there, and since not every youngster possesses them naturally, these have to be introduced externally. Not everyone (young or not) has a head, figuratively speaking, but everyone has buttocks. East Asian motivational model uses mostly egos for the purpose - the expectations are very high, and failure to meet them is considered to be a fundamental personal shortcoming (to the point of suicides of Japanese high schoolers who fail to get into prestigious universities). But this is an advanced model - again, not everybody has a well-developed sense of shame and personal responsibility, but everybody has buttocks, and this is where they are to be motivated.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.