Changing the Face of Corporal Punishment
Mpungu Primary school is located among one of the poorest and most densely populated
neighborhoods of Lusaka. Violence is rampant, and the school
is known to have one of the highest rates of Corporal Punishment in Zambia.
Although the practice was abolished in 2003 when the 1996 Education Act Cap 137
was amended, this has not translated well into the reality on the ground in
most schools in Zambia. As facilitators for an after school program called Peace Clubs, our team chose Mpungu as a simple starting place to dig a little deeper into the issue of Corporal Punishment. Could change be possible?
In our first workshop, I sat on a wobbly plastic chair in a dark classroom among the 35 pupils we had called into discuss physical abuse. When we asked them to tell us stories of the physical violence they receive as punishments, they were practically jumping over each other with an endless supply of personal anecdotes. My stomach turned as I wrote down statistics like “35 out of 35 pupils have been beaten with a whip” or “28/35 pupils have experienced ‘stick handsy’ – a painful punishment that involved placing sticks between each finger and squeezing the fingers together until they practically break .” To my dismay, it didn’t stop at physical violence. I filled the entire chalkboard at the front of the classroom with names that they have been called by their teachers, such as rat, cockroach, head like a pumpkin and useless. Pupils also named several cases of violence within the home. They reported being accused of stealing, being forced to sweep and clean for long hours, while others claimed to be beaten with a stick of a guava tree or a cooking stick when they committed offenses.
A 10 year old girl was in charge of drawing water every morning in a 10 Liter container. One boy who was living with his step parent and was in charge of all the household chores, while the girls took care of the babies. One child was responsible for going across town to buy foods for his mother to sell at the market before school at 5 am. The stories seemed endless. There also seemed to be an evident connection to home and school life, as most children who reported coming late to school were the ones subjected to corporal punishment from the teachers. Though the pupils laughed as they told me these stories, I couldn’t help but question where the justice was in this, or what was unconsciously happening to each child’s development. South African researchers at the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention Jesse Mconnell, Tarrio Mutongwizo, and Kristen Anderson state, “As corporal punishment is itself the infliction of physical violence on a child by usually an adult or authoritative figure, it bears within itself a legitimization of violence which is passed on to its victim. It signals the acceptability of dealing with conflict or expressing one’s feelings of anger by hitting others in realization or in offence. Children are natural imitators- they learn the language and social behaviour by imitating their parents. Children assume that their parents and teachers conduct themselves appropriately, and children replicate accordingly.”
In our next meeting with only the teachers of Mpungu, I
struggled to hide my anger towards the people who had inflicted pain to the
pupils I had just met. But surprisingly, Issa Embolo - the founder of Peace
Clubs - handled the situation with more grace than I could have. He began the workshop simply by asking the
teachers to come up with a list of challenges they face with pupils in the
classroom such as noise making, late coming, and fighting. Doing this activity helped to create a
mutual understanding of how challenging children can be at an early age, which
created a gateway for more honest dialogue as we continued. Issa added that the
purpose of our workshop was not to encourage or justify a child’s misbehavior, but
stressed that the way we punish them needs to fundamentally change.
While the teachers all agreed with us that beating should be eliminated
in the home and classroom, they admitted that they honestly did not know what
other method to take when it came to disciplining a child. The act to eliminate
corporal punishment is a fairly new concept to Zambians, considering that
physical violence as a form of punishment has been a deeply embedded philosophy
that was taught to them by their parents, grandparents, and far down the family
line. I struggled with their heartfelt questions about what is considered “good
punishments” and “bad punishments”, because I knew that the answer wasn’t that
simple. However, one suggestion we made was that the length and severity of the
punishment should be equivalent to a child’s age and circumstance. For example,
though picking up papers is not technically considered physical violence,
making a child pick trash around the school yard for the entire day under the boiling sun begins to deprive
children of their basic human needs and right for education. A further look needs to be taken at how
punishments can affect a child’s association with going to school. For many children in Zambia, school has become a place where they fear getting
beaten, not an environment that fosters growth and learning. Beating a child becomes a simple solution to a complex problem. It take less than 5 seconds to slap a
child across the face, but it takes much longer to sit down with them to
understand why the child is acting out in the first place. And often times,
teachers only see one half of the equation. Though it may look like a child is
deliberately coming late to school, without more dialogue or connection to the
home they may not know that the child is being forced by the parents to run to
the market across town each morning to buy food.
The teachers seemed open to new methods, but were stilled
overwhelmed by how to change this system of punishment. So, we decided to give
them three months. We challenged the teachers to take what we discussed to
heart, and to experiment with new forms of discipline and use it as an
opportunity for creativity and discovery.
When we returned 3 months later, we met separately with the teachers
and students just like we had in our first meeting. Against my skepticism, the
children explained to us that during the time we were absent, there were almost
no cases of corporal punishment in their home or school. The statistics I wrote
down were no more than “1/25 or 0/25” on punishments like being slapped,
kicked, or punched. We asked the students what types of punishments they were
given when they misbehaved, and they reported that most of the time they were
told to pick up papers around the school. However, this time they were allowed
to work in groups of 2 or 3 and it was always after school hours.
Upon meeting with the teachers, we were surprised to find
how active they were in experimenting with new approaches to discipline. They
came to the conclusion that if change in physical violence is to occur, there
must be more dialogue between both the teachers and parents, and teachers and pupils.
The teachers are now placing more of a priority on developing personal
relationships with pupils in order to discover the root causes of why they may
be acting out in class, rather than just resorting to violence. Through this,
they have found a direct tie from the issue of late coming to parents forcing
children to work for them in the morning. They are now addressing this issue with
parents when they come in to pay school fees for their child at the beginning
of each term. Since this dialogue started, there have been hardly any issues
with pupils coming late to school.
The teachers were also getting more creative about how they
handle misbehaviour. When a child was acting out in class one day, one teacher
decided to do a “role swap” with the child, where the teacher acted out as the
pupil disturbing the class, and the pupil was given the role as the teacher to
try and figure out how to manage the behaviour. Putting the pupil into the
teachers shoes will be a lasting example of difficult it can be to control a
classroom. Mr. Tempo, a teacher at Mpungu reflects on the experience by saying,
“We have achieved a lot of things through this experiment. We are happy because
we are not experiencing the same misbehaviour in the classroom that we were
before.”
I left the classroom of Mpungu Primary school that day with
a changed attitude towards tackling the issue of corporal punishment. The
teachers I once bitterly resented transformed into powerful symbols of positive
development, and tore down my pre-conceived notions about how effective small
attempts can be. Change will not
happen overnight, but running away from an issue that demands our attention
will do greater harm to the pupils as they grow and develop. Teachers at Mpungu
have proved how this cycle can be broken if we allow creativity and openness to
replace old imbedded philosophies on the effectiveness of violence.
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