When teachers resort to corporal punishment in the classroom, they reveal that they have surrendered. The tools of their own minds are not sufficient to motivate or inspire their students: only force will do. What lessons does this teach their students?
As we report today, nearly half of all boys at public schools in the Northern Emirates say that they have been beaten by a teacher, research by the Dubai School of Government has found. Many students responded that "it made them a man", said Natasha Ridge, who led the study. But what kind of men, and indeed, what kind of minds, are shaped from classrooms where corporal punishment is so frequently used ?
"For a long time, the common view in many countries was that a child needs to be absolutely terrified of his teachers in order to respect them, and that fear was usually instilled through physical abuse," reported Samineh I Shaheem, as assistant professor of psychology at the Human Relations Institute in Knowledge Village. This view of education overlooks one of its most important functions. While education is meant to provide students certain skills sets, in maths or writing for instance, education is also meant to develop an appreciation for reason and the value of others. Corporal punishment diminishes the value of both. Whatever skills they learn in school, students will be ill-equipped to reason through their problems when they enter the workforce if painful punishment has been their principal motivation.
The harm this does to students is not merely social or psychological. Though physical punishment has been banned in UAE schools since 1998, many students have been sent to the hospital after beatings from teachers. It is these cases that have brought the issue to the fore.
But a student need not be a victim of a life-threatening beating to experience corporal punishment's pernicious effects and its frequency reveals deeper problems in the education system. Are teachers adequately trained to manage classrooms? Are they interested enough in the material to spark student interest? Can they count on parents to support them when they rely on other, more humane forms of discipline? First, the beatings must stop. After that, these larger questions deserve a hearing.