SHOCKING INCIDENT
The death of 11 year old Shanno in New Delhi, allegedly after being punished by the school teacher, is shocking. The teacher is reported to have made a child stand in the scorching sun for two hours with seven bricks on her back. The act shows the teachers in human nature. The centre and state government should conduct periodical training programmes for the elementary teacher to sensitise them to the dangers of resorting to such punishment.
The violence against students in schools is on the increase. The teacher should understand the not all children have identical abilities. While it is important to screen the candidates who apply for teaching jobs, it is also important to stop blaming teachers for the poor performance of students. The teachers should be given periodical in-service training on how to treat children who fail to comply with the teachers instructions.
In human acts of teachers against students will not only bring a bad name to the noble profession of teaching but also discourage parents, especially the poor and the backwards from sending their children to school. All efforts by the government to ensure compulsory primary education will be rendered futile if teacher do not cooperate.
The Delhi incident is an insult to the very word “ teacher’The Job of a teacher is to prepare a child to face the world. Teacher who resort to such severe punishment are no less than criminals and should be treated as such.
The heart rending death of 11 year- old Delhi School girl Shanno Khan following brutal punishment by her teacher for failing to recite the full English alphabet string is a stark reminder of the torture’ that sometimes goes on in the name of pedagogy in several Indian Schools. Shanno, according to her older sister, was to stand in a murga position for over two hours in the hot sun and even placed seven bricks on her back. When the girl asked for water, the teacher kiked her and her head hit a wall and she began to bleed from the nose. Shanno lost conscious on returning home, and died two days later in hospital after slipping in to a coma. This may seem an extreme case of punishment gone horribly wrong but it does high light a fairly widespread pratice of Indian schools in 2000 the supreme court of India banned corporal punishment for children and directed the state to ensure that they received education in an environment of freedom and dignity, free from fear. In the same year the Delhi High Court struck down the provision for corporal punishment in the Delhi School Education, Rules, nothing that such punishment went against a child is dignity and was not in tune with united and was not in tune with the united Nations Convention on the Rights of the child to which India was a signatory. The National policy on Education .States that Corporal punishment would be firmly excluded from the Educational systems. Following incidents of suicide by students terrorized by teachers, states such as Goa and Tamil Nadu was replaced by a section that recommended that children should be given an opportunity to learn from their errors through corrective measures such as imposition and suspension from class.
How ever, enforcement is weak and instances of corporal punishment continue to be reported from across India. In fact, many schools practise a variety of methods of physical and emotional punishment. Occasionally, when teacher find mild forms of punishment en effective, they resort to third degree methods of the kind that caused Shanno’s death. It is time authorities as well as parents and the public mobilized to make it absolutely clear that corporal punishment or any form of deliberate infliction of pain and humiliation in school children, supposedly for their own good, would not be tolerated any longer
Prof John Kurakar
The death of 11 year old Shanno in New Delhi, allegedly after being punished by the school teacher, is shocking. The teacher is reported to have made a child stand in the scorching sun for two hours with seven bricks on her back. The act shows the teachers in human nature. The centre and state government should conduct periodical training programmes for the elementary teacher to sensitise them to the dangers of resorting to such punishment.
The violence against students in schools is on the increase. The teacher should understand the not all children have identical abilities. While it is important to screen the candidates who apply for teaching jobs, it is also important to stop blaming teachers for the poor performance of students. The teachers should be given periodical in-service training on how to treat children who fail to comply with the teachers instructions.
In human acts of teachers against students will not only bring a bad name to the noble profession of teaching but also discourage parents, especially the poor and the backwards from sending their children to school. All efforts by the government to ensure compulsory primary education will be rendered futile if teacher do not cooperate.
The Delhi incident is an insult to the very word “ teacher’The Job of a teacher is to prepare a child to face the world. Teacher who resort to such severe punishment are no less than criminals and should be treated as such.
The heart rending death of 11 year- old Delhi School girl Shanno Khan following brutal punishment by her teacher for failing to recite the full English alphabet string is a stark reminder of the torture’ that sometimes goes on in the name of pedagogy in several Indian Schools. Shanno, according to her older sister, was to stand in a murga position for over two hours in the hot sun and even placed seven bricks on her back. When the girl asked for water, the teacher kiked her and her head hit a wall and she began to bleed from the nose. Shanno lost conscious on returning home, and died two days later in hospital after slipping in to a coma. This may seem an extreme case of punishment gone horribly wrong but it does high light a fairly widespread pratice of Indian schools in 2000 the supreme court of India banned corporal punishment for children and directed the state to ensure that they received education in an environment of freedom and dignity, free from fear. In the same year the Delhi High Court struck down the provision for corporal punishment in the Delhi School Education, Rules, nothing that such punishment went against a child is dignity and was not in tune with united and was not in tune with the united Nations Convention on the Rights of the child to which India was a signatory. The National policy on Education .States that Corporal punishment would be firmly excluded from the Educational systems. Following incidents of suicide by students terrorized by teachers, states such as Goa and Tamil Nadu was replaced by a section that recommended that children should be given an opportunity to learn from their errors through corrective measures such as imposition and suspension from class.
How ever, enforcement is weak and instances of corporal punishment continue to be reported from across India. In fact, many schools practise a variety of methods of physical and emotional punishment. Occasionally, when teacher find mild forms of punishment en effective, they resort to third degree methods of the kind that caused Shanno’s death. It is time authorities as well as parents and the public mobilized to make it absolutely clear that corporal punishment or any form of deliberate infliction of pain and humiliation in school children, supposedly for their own good, would not be tolerated any longer
Prof John Kurakar
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