Parents against teacher discipline should be proactive
The contentious issue of teachers punishing errant pupils resurfaced recently with an irate mother writing to a newspaper to register her unhappiness with a teacher who disciplined her daughter.
Schools, parents and society expect teachers to do a competent job of educating the young. Besides teaching academic subjects, teachers also inculcate social skills, mould character, instil a reverence for rules and authority, and ingrain useful societal and national values.
But there are very limited options available to teachers today to rein in inattentive, disruptive, defiant or uncooperative students.
Overprotective and demanding parents make it difficult for teachers to do their jobs of ensuring the all-round development of students under their care.
I am not advocating a return to the years of yonder where teachers were free to slap or cane students. But parents who feel strongly about withholding the right of teachers to discipline their kids have to be proactive and fully supportive of the schools in resolving complaints made against their child for breaking school rules and infringing the regulatory conditions.
I taught mainly academically weak children for 40 years.
They were inclined to behave less well and shouldered emotional baggage such as low self-image, parental neglect or improper upbringing.
But I hardly encountered any issues with their parents over issues of discipline and punishment. Almost all the parents fully endorsed the actions taken by teachers when they enforced strict discipline to smoothen their children’s rough edges, whether academically, socially or in character-building.
I am pleased to state most of these former students are now useful and responsible citizens earning good salaries, both in the public and private sectors.
I believe in the adage: “To spare the rod is to spoil the child.”
It is too late to instil discipline and straighten a person’s wayward ways and character faultlines once they are firmly entrenched.
