SIR FRANK PETERS :: The day of reckoning for the ‘teacher’ who beats your child black and blue and mentally damages him or her for life seemingly is close by.
School ‘teachers’ may face dismissal, three month’s imprisonment or a Tk10,000 fine or all three, for practising corporal punishment in the school if a new law mooted by the ministry of education is passed. And the nation will stand still in a state of shock and horror if it isn’t.
Education Law 2013 is part of a new law the ministry has drafted to protect children. It is available for everyone to read and scrutinize on the ministry’s website until August 28.
Education Secretary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury said the ministry would proceed to make the law effective immediately after this date.
“We are concerned about corporal punishments taking place in schools and these (punitive) measures would help curb such incidents in the future,” he said.
Earlier, the ministry had adopted a policy to give guidelines to teachers in schools and madrasahs to refrain from punishing students. It attempted to introduce a sort of self-regulatory honour code, but it found that many law-breaking ‘teachers’ and headmasters were totally without honour and breached the code at seemingly every given opportunity.
They teach at school, ‘old habits die hard’ and they should know… from experience. A section of the teaching community were outraged when the Bangladesh High Court Divisional bench heroes Justice Md. Imman Ali and Justice Md Sheikh Hasan Arif introduced the anti corporal punishment law on January 13, 2011.
This deprived ‘teachers’ of the pleasure and stress-release they were enjoying through administering corporal punishment on children; it posed for them the problem of how they would vent their pent-up frustrations and anger (possibly a suppressed throw-back to their own school days when they were given corporal punishment). How would they cope? – By beating their wives, kicking their dogs?
It became all too clear that the teaching fraternity were incapable of self-control, self-discipline, self-regulation. Renegade ‘teachers’ carried on acting out their insanity and falsely labelling their cruel inhumane actions as ‘discipline’.
The nation recoiled in horror and disbelief when stories of cruelty to children by ‘respected caring teachers… pillars of society’ like the following examples emerged in the headlines:
[] In May 2012, 14 young girls at Talimul Quran Mahila Madrassah in Kadamtali were literally branded for life with a red-hot cooking spatula by their ‘teacher’ Jesmin Akhter to give them a sample of what hell is like (as if Dhaka’s traffic wasn’t enough!)
[] Culprit ‘teacher’ at Srijani Bidyaniketan, run by Patuakhali University of Science and Technology, misbehaved equally as bad. A ‘teacher’ ordered the students to stand up and sit down while holding their ears as punishment for making noise during recess. The secondary school director, AKM Mostafa Zaman, also agriculture dean in the university, then arrived on the scene, but not to admonish the ‘teacher’ for her misbehaviour and law-breaking act, but to make matters worse… a hell of a lot worse.
He confined the hapless pupils to a room of the under-construction building for the university’s disaster management department, tied their hands with rope and put 10 house bricks on the head of each student. Let us remember he was the dean, expected to set a good example to one and no doubt aware of the 2011 High Court ruling that abolished corporal punishment in schools.
But did the crime stop there? – No! He went on to beat the victims with sticks until they fell sick!
Then this year headmaster of Nurainpur Primary School in Patuakhali, beat several class V students and made them clean the blackboard using their tongues! If only these headmasters would put their innovative thinking into offering better education, Bangladesh would blossom.
Then there was Lob Chandra Das, a teacher of Kalidaha High School at the Kalidaha union of Feni who ruthlessly caned 13-year-old Mirazul Alam after he had scuffled with a girl student in his class. Mirazul could not speak for 11 days after the incident. Doctors said Mirazul was so traumatised by this experience that he burst into a hysterical cry at the mere mention of his teacher’s name.
Education Minister Nurul Islam MP and Education Secretary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury deserve national honours and to be listed in the Hall of Fame (beside Justice Md. Imman Ali and Justice Md Sheikh Hasan Arif) for their efforts to totally eradicate the abominable corporal punishment from the education system.
While much has been accomplished since the High Court ruling in 2011, it is obvious just from the examples of torture given above, there’s still a lot more to be done.
APPEAL TO PARENTS AND GUARDIANS:
If you are a parent or a guardian do not allow these salaried thugs, hooligans and outlaws who carry the title of ‘teacher’ to damage your precious Allah-given gift. Speak up on their behalf. One of the main roles of all parents is to protect their children.
Not too surprisingly ‘teachers’ who dish out corporal punishment are more often than not, bullies and cowards.
To prevent your child from being on the receiving end of corporal punishment, most times all it needs is for the child’s father to visit the ‘teacher’ and headmaster at the school and tell them they never want their child to be given corporal punishment again. (‘Teachers’ at Motijheel Ideal school, National Ideal School Banasree, Rampura and Haydarabad Ramoni Kumar High School can expect such visits.) Yes, it’s that simple. The ‘or else’ bit is unsaid, but understood! They might be bullies, cowards and lawbreakers, but they’re not dimwits!
It is the moral duty of all to speak up for those who are unable to speak for themselves, especially your family members. And if you love them, as you profess, then do something about it.
Sir Frank Peters is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, an award-winning writer, humanitarian, human rights activist, and a foreign friend of Bangladesh.