Monday, July 30, 2007

Teacher punishing students

Lately we've been bombarded with the teacher-punishing-students-in-a-hard-way news.

First there's the news where a teacher hit her student with her high heels (ouch!), and then came the news that a warden force a whole group of students squat in a dirty pool because apparently, there was a sanitary pad found in the toilet bowl.

In my opinion, yes, the teachers are being harsh with their students. But on the other hand, I think students now are way to pampered. In our parents' time, our grandparents will ask the teacher to punish their child if they do wrong, as long as their child's bone are not broken. But nowadays, parents gives them everything. In their eyes, their children are always right. When a teacher punished a student for not doing their homework or breaking the school law, their parents will immediately come to the school and threaten to sue the school.

But sometimes, I think the teachers are trying to release their stress on their students. As we know, nowadays, teachers are not just teaching, they need to attend meetings, seminars and whatnots. So basically, they have a lot of work to do, plus with the students' attitude, it can be stressful. I know it is wrong to channel their stress to the students, but after all, we are just humans.

Will this issue can be stopped? As long as a parent continue pampering their already way-too-pampered lil munchkin, and as long as a teacher continue channeling her/his stress on their students, it can will never be stopped.

1 comment:

Cool Mama said...

Its 2007, and we’re not living in those old days anymore.Kids nowadays are so smart that they can even sue the teachers for their traumas.
As a mother and a believer in nurturing our young ones to harbour only respect for their teachers, I must stress that handling of discipline issues require a lot of strategised activities and not just mere punishment.
Have the teachers ever given a thought to reverse psychology and counselling to instil good behaviour and discipline in our schoolchildren?  
It is indeed sad to see that many secondary and established schools in this modern and digital age are still resorting to caning and toilet cleaning to punish students who merely fail to comply with the expected norm of dressing.  
This so-called indiscipline can be easily overcome by just giving a note or even a standardised letter to the parents. I am sure any parent will respond positively to such a gesture.
A good discipline teacher should study the background and status of the child, try to understand his or her problem, tell the child the expectations of the school, and to be able to differentiate the first-timer from the hardcore ones.

Our present education system encourages students to think out of the box as well as to be more expressive.