Corporal punishment is given scanty attention!

SIR — On October 30, The New Vision reported that a director of a school in Busenyi who was arrested on allegations of hitting a student a student to death. Earlier on another director in a Kampala school was charged with beating a student to death. Children are injured or killed in the name of discipline! There are also the cases where a teacher at Katikamu SDA beat student who got paralysed. This is in addition to the five students at Mandela Comprehensive High School in Arua who were betean and severely injured. With this current trend where schools are in tight competition to produce best candidates at national examinations, teachers are under pressure to produce the ‘best’ out of them. So they use the cane as the easiest means to achieve their goals. But beating children is not right because it causes physical and emotional damage. Beating creates fear. Instead of learning and enjoying what they are being taught, students just cram in order to save their skins. And in extreme cases, they can completely fail to grasp anything because they are on tension! Issues like scrapping taxes on teachers’ salaries, getting rid of bodabodas in the city, take centre stage but the issue of corporal punishment in schools is given scanty attention!

Prossy Jonker Nakanjako
Child Rights Activist