The Education Amendment Bill, which was published in the Government Gazette in February this year, and received its second reading in Parliament and to be finalised in September seeks to amend various provisions of the Education Act (Chapter 25:04), that it will complies with the Constitution, with the view to upholding children’s rights.
Corporal punishment was lawful in all Zimbabwean schools before the adoption of the Constitution in effect since 2013. A school staff was authorised “to administer moderate corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes upon any minor male pupil or student” in terms of Article 241 (2) b of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act of 2014.
The Bill was being led by the Human Activist Miss Nyaradzo Mashayamombe through the NGO she started in 2010 called Tag a Life International (TaLI), under the campaign called Every Child In School #ECIS. Supported by the civil society organisations, the campaign sought to achieve the rights to State-funded basic education to every child especially the poor who have been shut out of school.
Other members of the campaign including the ZNCWC through its leader Reverend Nyanhete were pushing for the rights of persons with disabilities to be provided with special facilities, the right to human dignity, and the right to freedom from physical or psychological torture or cruel or inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
These provisions, which the Bill aims to achieve through amendment, articulate the need for equal opportunities for children in an environment that is free of violence, torture and degrading acts, so that their full potential is realised.
Nevertheless, some of the provisions in the Education Amendment Bill have kindled a debate among the legislature and the general citizens. The borne of contentions include teenage students as well as the need to ban corporal punishment.
Corporal punishment is the intentional infliction of pain or discomfort or the use of physical force upon a student with the intention of causing the student to experience bodily pain to correct or punish the student’s behaviour and the common forms both in schools and in homes include spanking, hitting, and even paddling.
According to Straus and Donnelly (2005), corporal punishment is “the use of physical force intended to cause pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correcting or controlling a child’s behaviour.”
Save Our Children Sweden (2005) has it on good account that corporal punishment involves use of physical force or degrading treatment, which causes dissatisfaction or pain to some degree, with the aim to mould, correct, monitor and change the behaviour or manner of the child.
Although the definitions varies but the bottom line about corporal punishment is that, it causes physical pain to the body through beating and the psychological one that involves degradation.
On an interview on Identities Conversations with Miss Nyaradzo ‘Nyari’ Mashayamombe, the Zimbabwe National council for the Welfare of Children national Director, Reverend Taylor Nyanhete argued that corporal punishment must be outlawed saying it is an inhuman act to citizens.
“Seriously we have to do away with corporal punishment, it is inhuman and it can cause psychological trauma to the child and by phycological trauma I mean that the pain is eternalised and is subconscious of the psyche and the child will likely to relive it. It does affect the child when beaten at school by the responsible authority; the chances are high that the child would likely to be bully in future and can beat others but is that the kind of a generation that we need in future? We cannot raise aggressive children all because of corporal punishment, it should have to be abolished.” said the reverend.
Asked on why he is firm on his views about the abolishment of corporal punishment, Reverend Nyanhete cited a few effects of corporal punishment that children, who are exposed to violence at home and at school, tend to exhibit traits of violence that will haunt them in their adult lives.
They may also take out all the bottled anger, hate and violence on other children, teachers or adults, who they interact with on a daily basis. Since teachers are their role models, pupils are conditioned to accept violence as the norm.
Reverend sternly said that, “when we say no to corporal punishment we mean it because once it is legalised it becomes a problem. There might be poor relations as I have said earlier on. It is in this sense that if it is at school; when the teacher spank a child that child hates the teacher and it goes an extra mile that if the child is female and was beaten by a male teacher she would probably hate men for the rest of her life likewise to boys. At home a parent can beat his or her child in the name of discipline but any injury can cause a psychological effect to the child hence this thing called corporal punishment should be abolished and find alternative measures to discipline the child”
Miss Mashayamombe also relived her memories at a primary school she went to and added that she did not have any good memories about her primary school because she once suffered physcological trauma from teachers through beatings.
She said that, “trauma is real and I remember when I was in my primary school level that term we do athletics, they would force us to run and a teacher would be behind us spanking us to run faster. Through that she developed a hatred for running, only to find out that she was actually a good long distance runner.
However, Reverend Nyanhete cement his arguments that as an organisation they had embarked on a journey to make sure that they deal with corporal punishment to elliminate it. He emphasized that there are certain alternative measures to replace corporal punishment and some of those alternatives are in the Children’s Act.
“As an organisation we have already a way ahead to make sure that corporal punishment is banned; we are creating episodes in conjunction with Zimbabwe Broadcasting Cooperation raising awareness that corporal punishment must go, spare the rod and spare the child. We should not necessarily inflict pain both physically and psychologically to the children but we had a dozen of alternative ways to discipline a child. The alternatives are there in the Children’s Act. You can refer the child to a social worker who resides in the area I mean the Department of Social Welfare the child can get enough help there than spanking her/him. There are organisations like those National Association of Social workers whose role is to engage the community in educating parents, teachers on how to discipline children. There is need for TV, radios or community sensitisations and as well, people can reach out to church leaders too.
Its not all communities with those social workers and those needed facilities but he said that there are limitations of course however people should be aware that those kinds of facilities are there and they should make use of them. In his last remarks, Reverend proposed that The Ministry of Higher Education should come up with a component of alternative discipline as a core-subject to be part of the teacher training, so that if one failed to pass it he/she cannot be a teacher and that as citizens we should make noise about the review of the curricula
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