INDIA-EDUCATION: Teachers Rule Classrooms

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bijoy Basant Patro

NEW DELHI, Jul 29 1997 (IPS) - A five-year-old kindergarten student, Yogesh, was battered to death by his school principal last fortnight in the state of Uttar Pradesh in north India. The reason: poor performance in class.

Arati, 12, was beaten senseless in a government-run school in New Delhi last September for similar reasons. Because her parents protested, the school authorities expelled her, saying she was not paying the school fees. Her parents are unsuccessfully fighting the expulsion order, saying that state schools are free.

Physical punishment is routine in Indian classrooms, specially in the overcrowded state schools where a teacher handles a class of 60 or more students. Though causing “grievous hurt” or using “criminal force” in schools are punishable offences under Indian law, teachers are rarely prosecuted.

A senior official of the National Council for Educational Research Training in New Delhi, who did not want to be named, said an unpublished study has revealed that ill treatment in the classroom was a reason for a third of drop-outs.

In its blue-print for education last year, the Indian government acknowledged the problem is widespread. “Corporal punishment will be firmly excluded from our education system in order to have a child-centred approach,” it stated.

The concern, however, is not reflected in school rules, which have not changed with the times. Most school teachers believe that the rod should be used liberally to discipline the child and command respect.

In Delhi’s state-managed schools where the majority of the city’s children are enrolled, the head of the school has the right to use physical force “in cases of persisting impertinence or rude behaviour towards teachers, physical violence, intemperance and serious form of misbehaviour with other students.” The rules framed in 1973 have not changed.

A chance to amend the provision was ignored by lawmakers last May when a committee set up by the Delhi government to review the Delhi Education Act, instead recommended the right to punish should be extended to “teachers authorised by the school’s head”.

Clearly disappointed, Kusum Jain, who heads a group of concerned parents, says “the political leadership is insensitive.” She said that in an earlier meeting with her, the Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma, brushed aside complaints against heavy-handed teachers saying “even parents beat their children.”

More sensitive teachers who admit to using force in classrooms, say the problem is because classes are large and they have no other way of keeping control.

“With more than 60 students in my class, I have a headache by the time I return home from school. Sometimes I loose all control over myself and beat up an errant boy or girl,” admits Saroj Bala, a teacher in a municipality-run school.

Snehlata Gupta, a teacher in a government-run school in east Delhi, also insists most teachers resort to corporal punishment only when they are “pushed to the extreme”.

Gupta, who taught in one of Delhi’s leading schools, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, before she got the job at the government school, says few people realise that children in state schools, the bulk of whom are from working class families, have special problems.

Government school students are often punished for not being good learners, she said. “I have observed that these children cannot remember as well as middle class children. They have a shorter attention span, cannot remember and have a poor response. I am convinced that this is because of their poor nutritional standards … So, teachers are punishing children because they come from families that cannot afford nutritious food.”

But her point of view is not shared by many in her profession. Harish Chandra Sharma, the principal of a state school here for children from nearby slums is a firm believer of corporal punishment. He told the ‘The Times of India’ daily recently that since his students “witness violence in and around them daily … we teach them a lesson with the stick.”

However, his counterpart Raj Pal Chawla, principal of a primary school for girls in the same neighbourhood is more moderate in his opinion. “In some cases, a slap works wonders and sometimes just a pat yields the results.”

At present, no one is really paying much attention to the emotional or psychological damage of corporal punishment on students, while most parents are happy to leave the matter in the hands of teachers, who they believe are better equipped to handle

the business of education. “I have parents coming to me to say, ‘Madam, do beat our child’,” points out school teacher Gupta.

An overburdened government school system is still to realise that children need special handling. Increasing pressure to succeed in school has led to a spate of suicides among students in recent years. Last year, students of the elite Delhi Public School went on a rampage, setting fire to school property, after an accident on the school premises.

Teacher trainer Kirti Jayaram blames much of the problems on out-dated training programmes. The school system is collapsing because “teachers are not equipped and they work under extreme pressure,” she says. “They are trained by people who themselves do not interact with children.”