Thursday, November 23, 2006

Spare the rod & the child: panel

22 Nov, 2006 Times News Network

BANGALORE: Can we punish a child for hitting another for reasons that the child thinks are justified? Isn't spanking a student a form of indisciplined behaviour? Is punishment a strategy to change a child or simply a manifestation of the adultf' anger? Are we looking at the whole child, not just his head?

These were among the slew of questions raised at the Times Round Table on "Can we spare the rod and spare the child?" held at the TOI office on Wednesday.

With a wide spectrum that included two principals, a counsellor, a child psychiatrist and education consultants, the debate could only get richer.

The panelists spoke in one voice about the need to see discipline beyond the act of using the cane. If one of them insisted that corporal punishment is a non-negotiable issue and so the debate itself becomes irrelevant, another saw the act of taming students as taking a negative position.

This premise threw up a whole range of issues crying for change, particularly in the intellectually challenging environment that we live in.

Suggestions ranged from making the classroom a more discursive space, changing parenting styles, retraining teachers, to removing the emphasis on mere scholastic learning, making examinations a time for celebration, learning the art of listening to children to exploring all other options before thinking of punishing the child.

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