I grew up with teachers who used the cane as their ultimate tool for what they thought was the education of their students.
When I was nine, I had a science teacher who would tell the class to memorise long pages of notes word by word. For the next three nights, until the next science class, I would stay up trying to do so although I knew it was a waste of time because I couldn’t memorise anything even if I boiled, blended and drank my note book in a soup bowl. And just as I expected, when it was my turn to recite the notes, I would go blank and end up with teary eyes and a red palm.
I would feel so ashamed that I would go home fully motivated to remember the next set of notes. But it never helped. It wasn’t that I was a bad or lazy student. I just sucked big time in memorising.
After a while, I gave up trying. I wasn’t getting any better. And my teacher wasn’t making any other effort to make me better at learning what he was teaching. So why waste time, I thought. Clearly the only thing the cane taught me was that I had a lousy teacher who had to depend on his rotan to do the teaching for him.
But my science teacher wasn’t half as bad as my headmaster, who was famous around school for his set of rotans.
Every time a student was sent to him for punishment, he would arrange the rotans on his table according to thickness to build the suspense. And then he would swing the one he thought was appropriate for the crime – without investigating the accusation.
Many of my friends who were first time offenders were caned alongside the school gangsters for something as simple as forgetting to bring a text book to class or doing his homework. A classmate of mine was caned almost every week for not handing out her homework. If the headmaster had done a little investigation, he would have found out that she lived in a house without electricity and went to work after school hours to help her parents.
Another schoolmate of mine was caned for getting herself pregnant at the age of 15. She was then suspended. A couple of months later, she returned to school after having an abortion – and was caned once again.
Did any of my friends change their ways after getting the rotan? A few did, and these were those who were embarrassed enough by the punishment to avoid repeating their mistakes. But the bullies and the gangsters never changed their ways. Neither did the girl who got pregnant. The year after her abortion, she ran away from home with her boyfriend.
All of this happened 30 years ago. However, I am quite certain similar situations will repeat now that the Education Ministry has allowed caning in public schools.
Caning didn’t help resolve problems back in the old days. So what makes anyone think it will today? Of course, there are people who will say, “We were caned. See how well we have turned out.” But that proves nothing. Students should be taught right from wrong, not threatened into doing right.
Inflicting pain to discipline students is definitely a degrading way to treat children. And who are we to discipline students anyway? Take a look at some of our teachers. Some smoke in the school compound, some male teachers touch female students unnecessarily, some turn up late for work, some cut classes to lepak in the staff room, some come to class unprepared and some even bully students.
How many of our teachers can be considered as role models for students?
Come on, we can’t treat all students the same way. Different students come from different backgrounds and have different personalities. Some need to be advised, some need to be warned, some need to be punished (not physically, of course) and some need love or attention. Our teachers, who sometimes even have trouble teaching the lessons they have been teaching for years, are definitely not skilled enough to know what each child needs.
To put it simply, teachers are not counsellors. They are educators. And educating should not involve inflicting pain.
Sadly, our ministry has decided on caning and other forms of corporal punishment as the solution to all things. Are we teaching our children that violence is the answer to every problem?
Dear Minister of Education, this is clearly why everyone believes that Malaysian education is a failure. New half-baked policies are introduced every time politicians need to provide solutions to existing problems. Students are treated like lab rats and abandoned when new politicians decide to make new policies.
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If I had a choice, it is those policymakers whom I would rotan.