Corporal punishment should not be allowed in school. What are your views?

Corporal punishment is the act of using physical force to punish a student for wrongdoing. This may include using
a ruler across the back of the hand or a cane to the rear. Should we allow corporal punishment in school as a way to
discipline a student?

Proponents for corporal punishments have argued that teachers in school have found it an increasingly daunting
task to discipline students. Not being able to administer corporal punishment on students make teachers powerless
in the face of problematic students who may in some cases be violent. These students realise that they have nothing
to fear as they knew that there is nothing much that the teacher can do to them. A worse scenario is when these
fearless students challenge the teachers causing other students to be more rowdy and rebellious thus pushing
teachers to the limit. However, would allowing the teachers to bring back the cane be a solution to student
indiscipline?

On the other hand, opponents of corporal punishment argue that corporal punishments often cause injuries
and trauma unnecessarily. Many acts of corporal punishments leave visible marks and bruises. The mental anguish,
particularly for vulnerable students, can last a life time. It can have a lifelong impact on the psychological and mental
make-up of a child. The impact of the emotional make-up of a student who is caned in front of the other students is
real and the damage it has on the child in his or her later years of development cannot be quantified.

In addition to this, there is always the risk of leading to abuse in the classroom. There is definitely a great
difference in terms of how one teacher canes a student as compared to another especially if the teacher canes a
student as compared to another especially if the teachers differ in terms of size. This makes the system unfair as the
severity of the punishment largely revolves around luck. It is unfair to the students and it makes abuse likely. The
intention to correct becomes questionable too when the teacher who administers the corporal punishment becomes
angry and emotional. At this stage it would be more likely that the teacher unleashes his or her anger at the students
rather than to inflict pain in order to correct and reform the child.

Another drawback of allowing corporal punishments is the fact that it has no effect on bad behaviour.
Psychological studies conducted have shown that there is hardly any correlation between corporal punishment and
behaviour of a child. Instead, it results in low confidence and low self- esteem in the child concerned. Being spanked
is an emotional event for a child. Children often remember with crystal clarity times they were spanked. Many adults
look back on corporal punishment in childhood with great anger and sadness. This feeling will lead to greater
damage in one's later adult life and may have a domino effect on the upbringing of his or her own children. It is even
possible to have this anger in the child manifest itself in a more violent way when he or she becomes a teacher or a
parent later in life.

All in all, corporal punishment only induces fear in a child and does not solve discipline problems. It is merely a
quick way of controlling the behaviour of a child. Children deserve to be protected from this cruel and obsolete
practice when there are more viable ways of controlling a child. The child needs to be guided to understand the root
cause of his own indiscipline and develop discipline from within.