Corporal Punishment: A Torturous Way To Teach Students Discipline

A school is a temple of learning where students go to acquire knowledge and to add to their mental acumen, rather than to be subjected to torture and humiliation. Corporal punishment, which is meted to students in a lot of schools by their teachers for the minor offense of indiscipline or misbehavior. This is done by caning or spanking them in public, which is aa retributive form of punishment. The objective of corporal punishment is to deter others from committing the same mistake. This very concept and method of giving such punishments are not in conformity to what a school stands for.
The school which practices such kind of punishment becomes a prison instead and hampers the mental state of the children. The children committing mistakes are learners, and not criminals to be punished such heinously. Students get clouded with fear and apprehension thus leaving them in a state where they no more experiment or have the urge to try something just because of the fear of getting punished. Thus, the child remains content in following rules and curbing his creative talent to do things differently. And this not just how a child should be treated. This will instill in him, the fear of getting beaten up wince an early age making him live his entire life in fear.
There are debates on why is corporal punishment helpful in keeping the children disciplined. But this is not how discipline or any other manner should be taught to the children. To teach the children something, you can’t teach them to live their life in an underconfident and frightening way. Further, in their life, they’ll always be traumatized by the fact by the way they were beaten up in school. There are different ways by which you can teach a student something, and not just by torturing them physically.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to stop corporal punishment, also if required laws should also be framed against it. Because corporal punishment has a crippling effect on the personality of the students. It makes them nervous, fearful, and underconfident. Few institutions have already banned it but some government institutions are still following it and it needs to be stopped. The days of “Spare the rod and spoil the child” are pretty much gone and now is the time to awaken ourselves.

By: Surbhi Singh

Content:https://www.britannica.com/topic/corporal-punishment