Ethirajan Anbarasan, UNESCO Courier journalist
“The best method of teaching mathematics?” A cartoon published in Daily Nation, a leading Kenya newspaper.
‘Some students told us that they dropped out of school because of severe beating by their teachers. This is in clear violation of children’s right to education’
|
Heavy handed treatment Corporal punishment is legal not only in Kenya,
but also in a number of other east African countries, including Tanzania, Sudan and
Somalia. Governments complain that there are not enough resources and trained personnel
to reduce the size of big classes, which some teachers find difficult to manage without
corporal punishment. |
‘When we were under British rule, those who refused to pay taxes or those who did not obey the rules were caned in public. The use of the cane was a symbol of authority and the legacy continues’
‘Before I went for the child rights training, I always viewed the punishment as part of the learning process. Now I work with the pupils almost at a level of partnership’
The widespread
use of corporal punishment in Kenyan schools has led to increasing dropout rates
and in a few cases, to death
When Justus
Omanga, a fourth grade student at Mobamba Secondary School in Kenya’s Kisii district,
repeatedly denied allegations that he had brought a girl into the school compound
one night last August, his teachers became furious.
Four of the teachers kicked, hit and beat Omanga so hard with a huge stick that the
boy fell unconscious. A month later he died in hospital as a result of severe damage
to his kidneys and other internal injuries, according to family members.
Omanga’s case is not isolated. According to the Kenyan media corporal punishment
has led to the deaths of at least six students in the last four years. While caning
is a regular feature in schools, some students have suffered serious injuries which
include “bruises and cuts, broken bones, knocked-out teeth and internal bleeding,”
says a recent report from the New York-based non-governmental organization Human
Rights Watch (HRW) titled Spare the Child: Corporal Punishment in Kenyan Schools.
An incentive
to violence and revenge
Kenya is not the only
country in the world that still practises corporal punishment. Indeed, only 70 countries,
beginning with Sweden in 1979, have banned the practice. But experts say Kenya is
one of the worst offenders when it comes to violence stemming from corporal punishment.
“In Kenya corporal punishment against children in schools has reached dangerously
high levels,” says Yodon Thonden, a Tibetan-American who led the five-member research
team which prepared the HRW report.
Apart from the brutality which is often, in Kenya at least, associated with the practice,
corporal punishment in itself can provoke anger in its victims, leading to resentment
and low-self esteem. It can also encourage violence and revenge as solutions to problems,
experts say.
Moreover, child rights activists contend that corporal punishment goes against the
1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which affirms the child’s
need for care and protection. Article 19 of the convention, which has been ratified
by 191 countries including Kenya, specifies that states must take appropriate measures
to protect children from “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse,
neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.”
The HRW report, based on a field study, including scores of interviews with students,
teachers, parents and officials, says that Kenyan children are often punished for
petty offences like coming late to school or wearing a torn uniform.
The problem has dire implications for basic education. A recent study shows that
the enrolment rate in primary schools is fast declining and only 42 per cent of those
enrolled in first grade complete the primary school cycle. The decline is, among
other reasons, due to poverty and a hostile learning environment, say analysts.
“Some students told us that they dropped out of school because of severe beating
by their teachers. This is in clear violation of children’s right to education,”
says Thonden.
“So far no teacher has been convicted for these deaths,” says Jemimah Mwakisha, a
journalist who has written extensively on the subject in Kenya’s leading newspaper
Daily Nation.
Neither are teachers commonly sentenced for inflicting serious injuries. Victims
often come from rural areas, where people don’t have the finances to hire a lawyer
and where legal aid is poor. In some instances where teachers have been taken to
court, they have gone unpunished, as it has been difficult to prove a motive in the
killing as required under the criminal law, Mwakisha says.
Parents
scared to speak out
Excessively harsh corporal
punishment tends to be particularly common in the countryside. “In rural areas, parents
don’t formally object to their children being beaten for fear they [the children]
might be victimized further,” says Mwakisha.
In public, Kenyan education ministry officials have strongly denied the HRW allegations,
stating that some isolated incidents in rural schools have been exaggerated. However,
in private, a senior education ministry official admits that the report was “more
or less correct.” He says teachers “brutally beat children in many schools without
any proper reason. This is a practice that can only be stopped by abolishing corporal
punishment altogether.”
Nevertheless the recent deaths and the report have triggered a debate in Kenya on
banning corporal punishment, as other African countries including Namibia, Burkina
Faso, South Africa and Ethiopia have done in recent years.
According to government regulations, corporal punishment may be inflicted only in
cases of continued or grave neglect of work, lying, bullying and gross insubordination.
The beating, with a cane no more than half an inch thick, can be given only by or
in the presence of a head teacher. Regulations state that boys should be hit on the
backside and girls on the palm of the hand. Students are not supposed to get more
than six strokes as punishment and a written record of all the proceedings should
be kept.
“The rules are hardly followed. Teachers use clubs, bamboo canes, sometimes even
a rubber whip to beat the students,” says Thonden.
For
many teachers, a tool to cope with big classes
A strong constituency
of Kenyan teachers is in favour of retaining corporal punishment, even though they
concede more restrictions are required. A few years ago when the Director of Education
tried to make the practice illegal, the teachers’ union said it would not recognize
such a ban.
Many teachers argue that without corporal punishment the schools would descend into
chaos and that children would become even more unruly by the time they reached high
school. In fact, they believe that in the long run corporal punishment means less
rather than more violence. “Western countries give excessive freedom to their children.
Look at the violent incidents in many schools in the United States,” says Lawrence
Kahindi Majali, Assistant Secretary General of the Kenya National Union of Teachers
(KNUT).
Many Kenyan teachers also contend that corporal punishment is one of the few disciplinary
tools available given large class sizes. According to a government report there are
5,718,700 students and 192,000 teachers at primary school level, giving a teacher-pupil
ratio of 1:31. In many schools classes of 50-60 students are common.
The burden is heaviest in rural areas where retired and transferred teachers’ posts
are often left vacant. As a result, authorities frequently combine two or three schools
in a region, putting additional pressure on the existing teaching staff.
Teachers also try to justify corporal punishment by citing Kenya’s long tradition.
“When we were under British rule, those who refused to pay taxes or those who did
not obey the rules were caned in public. The use of the cane was a symbol of authority
and the legacy continues,” says Majali.
Many teachers admit that they often carry out corporal punishment without the presence
of the headmaster. In violation of the rules, the students are sometimes beaten all
over the body, and often records of corporal punishment are not kept in schools.
Stephen P, a fifth grade student in Moi primary school in Nairobi, says teachers
cane him or slap him regularly. His offences include coming late to school and not
paying school fees on time. Elizabeth Z, who is in the fourth standard, says teachers
slap her and pinch her on the cheeks for not doing homework.
“My children were not treated well by the teachers after I complained about caning
by their class teacher,” says Deborah N, a mother of two living in Nairobi.
Teachers are also afraid. They quote a growing number of instances in which teachers
have been attacked by students. In one extreme case, a class prefect was killed by
students in the town of Nyeri, near Nairobi, early this year for being too strict
with them.
The fact that corporal punishment leads so often to brutality may be symptomatic
of the pressures facing the whole teaching profession. Teachers’ salaries—ranging
from 4,000 Kenyan shillings ($60) to about 15,000 ($200) a month—are among the lowest
in the civil service. Teachers seem to take their frustrations out on their students,
say experts. “Low salaries reduce teacher morale, and many of the lowest-paid teachers
are forced to find housing in slum areas,” says the HRW report.
Mounting
tension
Education ministry
officials say guidance counsellors in secondary schools encourage teachers to adopt
methods to deal with depressed or problem students and thus avoid tensions leading
to corporal punishment.
The counsellor discusses with the concerned student why he or she committed an offence
and tries to find solutions. But officials admit that there are not enough counsellors
in schools due to financial constraints and even those who have been posted as counsellors
undertake other responsibilities due to shortage of staff.
Teachers in favour of reducing corporal punishment feel that the best place for introducing
alternative disciplinary methods is the Teacher Training Programmes. At present teachers
say that they hardly spend more than four to five hours on classroom management during
their initial two-year training period for primary school.
Realizing the gravity of the problem, many non-governmental organizations have now
joined the campaign to abolish corporal punishment and have started working with
teachers to minimize its use until the law is changed.
“Until a legal sanction is obtained, we decided it would be better to work with the
teachers,” says Jacqueline Anam-Mogeni, child rights adviser at the Netherlands Development
Organization (NDO).
The Nairobi-based NDO organizes workshops and training programmes to help teachers
to get to grips with their problems and encourage them to use counselling methods
and other forms of punishment, such as manual work.
Alternative
solutions
NDO selects a group
of teachers and volunteers from other non-governmental organizations from a particular
region where corporal punishment incidents are high, and organizes workshops exposing
them to human rights and child rights issues. After a week’s training, the teachers
go back to their schools and return for evaluation every three months.
“We first ask the participants how they treat their own children at home. Once they
realize there is a problem they themselves come up with alternative solutions,” says
Mogeni.
The first session attracted 24 participants from different parts of Kenya. Some teachers
say their attitude towards children has changed after participating in the course.
“Before I went for the child rights training, I always viewed the punishment as part
of the learning process. Now I work with the pupils almost at a level of partnership,”
says Esther Nyakio Ngugi, a teacher at Kirigiti Girls Approved school in Kiambu.
Teachers who participated in the programme say they have realized that they were
basically driving away students from schools due to constant beatings.
“This is only a beginning. We need more government and public support till we finally
abolish corporal punishment,” says Mogeni.