Dear Editor,

Neither teachers nor students should suffer any form of abuse in school. Evidence that there is serious need for social change surfaces as each violent day passes.

The blurring of the distinction between adults and adolescents results in adults acting like teenagers and failing to provide mature guidance and support for their children. Obviously, some things must change.

Some commentators keep reminding us that in the days of corporal punishment children were well behaved. Well, in the past, many things didn't get reported; they may not have been reported in the press, nor to anyone at home.

As a child, I attended a small private school in Jamaica which offered a superior education. The school hired a teacher from Britain who routinely assaulted students for the slightest infraction of a rule, even for looking at her in the wrong way. I made friends with her early, and never became one of her victims. Other children were not so fortunate.

On certain days, the teacher monitored a letter-writing class. She sat at her desk, peering over her spectacles, in what seemed like a search for an opportunity to be annoyed. The opportunity sighted, and her blood boiling, I could see the rage in her eyes building up like a flaming fire. The class would freeze. Whose turn was it, I wondered? Who is her target? Who is she going to attack next?

She wore only ballet slippers which gave her an edge at racing across the well-shined floor. Like lightning, or a bat out of hell, or a speeding bullet, she would bolt from her chair and seize one of the children, only seven or eight years old, by the hair and bang their head several times on the desk. Anyone who saw her would see her yellow teeth gritted in anger. When she was through banging the child's head, she would return to her chair smiling in satisfaction.

This form of punishment went on for some time, until one incident drove me to act. I asked several children to tell their parents what was going on at school. I decided that it didn't make sense to tell my father as he was too busy at work, so I chose children whose parents came to school regularly.
The parents came to school and spoke with the headmistress without any boisterousness or abuse of the teacher in question. The abusive teacher was dismissed, to the relief of us all. Unknown to me at the time was that I was in training for future work.

Whether it is flogging, sun punishment, whipping, or caning, corporal punishment has the same potential as being in a car wreck; you can walk away unscathed, or you can get seriously damaged, or killed.

AM Ansari
stop1998@aol.com

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