Adventures in Corporal Punishment

Note: This post has been a long time in the making.  Peace Corps volunteers are instructed encouraged to only write about positive things, or to write about negative things in a positive way.  However, this is an issue that makes it increasingly harder for me to be engaged and motivated at work.  In fact, it’s an issue that makes me not even want to go to work.  I trust that my readers know all the wonderful things about Botswana and will not let this aspect of the culture taint their opinion of the country and its people.

Today during morning assembly, in a classroom behind us, I heard a repetitive “thwack, thwack, thwack.”  I instinctively knew what it was, but in a rare optimistic moment I chose to believe otherwise.  After five minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore and peeked around the lockers to find: a teacher beating his students.  Without knowing (or caring) the students’ supposed infractions, I turned to the group of teachers next to me and declared, “I am not going to stand here while he beats students.  It’s disgusting.”

They laughed at me. 

“And you know what?  It’s not funny either.  It’s horrible,” I replied.  Then, in typical Tess fashion, I tossed my hair and stormed off, doing my best haughty runway walk.

I might have been abler to take this episode in stride, had I not experienced something similar yesterday.

Yesterday was one of those sporadic occasions where I was early to work.  Homeroom and attendance starts at 7:30, but this day I walked onto the school compound around 7:10.  Students were dashing toward the front gate, which confused me – school didn’t start for 20 minutes.  One of the HODs (Head Of Department) had students in a line, and he was taking a long, thin stick and beating each one on his back for being “late.”  Yes, you read that right.  Being 20 minutes early for school is a punishable offense.  Not to mention, many of these children are orphans, impoverished, and taking care of multiple younger siblings.  I often wonder if the teachers ever consider how difficult it must be to take care of three young children, then walk a full 45 minutes to school and still be on time.

I covered my ears (the sound of stick against skin makes me sick) and yelled at him, “But it’s only 7:10!” and briskly walked to the staff room.  Want to know how many teachers were at work?  One.  I doubt anyone was beating them for being late.

The fact is that you can’t escape corporal punishment in Botswana.  There is a quote from the Bible that people here use as a defense: Spare the rod and spoil the child.  (Thanks a lot, Jesus.)  It is used at home and at school, and more often than not parents feel that their children probably deserve whatever punishment they are given at school.

The worst case of corporal punishment I’ve experienced happened last year.  A random locker check revealed that some students had alcohol, knives, condoms, and dagga (weed) in their lockers.  Stupid?  Yes.  Illegal?  Yes.  So the school got the Kgosi (the chief) involved in their discipline.  The way these adults decided to handle it was to hold a special assembly for the entire student body.  The Kgosi brought a stick almost the width and length of a cane and beat the students, one by one, until they bled.  He then used that same stick, without cleaning it, on the next student.  Because, obviously, in a country with a 30% HIV rate, it’s really smart to be mixing people’s blood.

I didn’t see the beatings – I learned of them from the other teachers.  As soon as I understood what was going to happen, I tried to talk to the school head, to tell her that this wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but she blatantly ignored me, and so I left.  I live a fifteen-minute walk away from the school, and I could hear the students yelling and jeering at their unfortunate peers’ all the way up to my front door – like some kind of perverted carnival, or a 16^th-century hanging in the town square.  It made me literally nauseous, and I boycotted work the rest of the week.

But why, if the teachers, parents, and local authorities feel it’s okay, am I so adamantly against corporal punishment?

The students of Motswakhumo do not perform well academically.  Our pass rate for the entire school is around 50%, even though getting a 50% on an exam is considered passing.  Kids don’t want to come to school.  I’m not blaming corporal punishment for the students’ low grades (there are a hundred other factors) but I do think that in order for youth to thrive they need to feel safe in their environment.  It’s hard to feel safe when teachers walk around carrying sticks, and can beat students at their own discretion, whether it’s an incident of bullying or a student being punished because someone stole his notebook (true story).

More relevantly, I find it completely against my moral principles.  There is no scientific proof that corporal punishment works.  It’s just a way for teachers to use students as a sounding-board for their frustration and as a show of power.  It honestly kills me inside to work at a school where teachers demand respect from students that they then refuse to return.

I’ve had some minor successes on the issue.  Some teachers have come up to me and started a discussion on how things are different in America.  (Note: in these discussions, I always start off by saying that in some states, corporal punishment is still legal.)  One of my favorite teachers, Mr. Kgogobi, has stopped using the method, and when I see him with a stick he assures me, “I am only carrying it to scare them – I don’t beat.”  When I see a teacher going to beat a child, I ask him or her if she has filled out all the proper paperwork and submitted it to the head teacher, which usually stops them in their tracks (or if not, at least shows the students that there is protocol that the teachers should be following).  After the horrible incident last year, one of the HODs apologized to me at the staff briefing.  Although it was a fake apology – “we’re sorry that you were offended” – at least I brought some awareness.

Despite these few, small steps, I’m pretty hopeless that there will be true change.  Teachers ask me how I was disciplined as a child, and I explain to them about after-school detention, suspension, and community service.  But teachers won’t agree to supervise detention or community service without extra pay, of which there’s no chance of getting.  And suspension?  Students would only be too happy not to have to go to school – and their families would be relieved to have extra help around the house.

I suppose this gives a bleak outlook on the situation, but I don’t really see a way that I can sugarcoat it.  People beat children because they were beaten as children, and until a whole generation decides to change its ways, the stick will always be the first method of discipline.