#BTColumn – Corporal punishment leads to suicide

The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY. 

by Sir Frank Peters

Pause for a few moments and stop whatever you are doing. You need to read this. It could save your child’s life or the life of someone who you love.

Shivam Pandey, was a 15-year-old Class 8 student at a village school in India. Was? Yes, he’s dead.

Shivam was beaten-up by his class ‘teacher’ when he dared complain about the unlawful corporal punishment given by the ‘teacher’ to his younger brother. The ‘teacher’ marched him to the principal’s office where Shivam was also given a thrashing. The following day, the school manager expelled Shivram from the school.

Distraught by the incident, Shivam ended his life by hanging himself from a ceiling fan at his home. His mother found his body.

Try to imagine for one moment the horrific thoughts of agony and despair that went through his mind as Shivam slipped the noose over his head.

Only God knows what he was thinking at the time, but no doubt comforting smile-inducing thoughts of Walt Disney characters were not among them.

Cry for help

It is said that suicide is the final desperate plea for help that lands on deaf ears. It is always extremely sad when anyone commits suicide, relative or not. It’s a sure sign of society’s failure at its worst. Suicide never seems right… it never is right.

Many countries have banned corporal punishment in schools, including India, but there’s always the wayward ignorant ‘teachers’ who do not comply and these mentors in terrorism must be removed.

Many ‘teachers’ and school principals consider themselves to be a law onto themselves. They make the laws that sweep through the predominantly uneducated villages, like an ill wind, and whatever they say, goes.

Regrettably, many ignorant parents give them support believing the (ignorant) ‘teachers’ to be more educated and know better than themselves.

After all, they themselves endured corporal punishment and it didn’t do them any harm, they will argue, as they reach for the pick-me-up pills that help them to forget.

Good-hearted boy

Shivam left a suicide note detailing what had happened that led to his ending his life. The police have registered a case of abetment to suicide against the principal (Bal Krishna), school manager (Jangi Sharma) and ‘teacher’ (Goldi). The principal and teacher are on the run.

Could it happen here? – Most definitely. It can happen anywhere there is corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is the tool Satan gives to ‘teachers’ to cover their ignorance and teaching inadequacies.

No child should attend school alone. He or she should go with the knowledge the protection of their parents and society in general is with them in support.

While suicide is the loudest cry for help and the ultimate protest a child can make, it should never come to that and its horrific when it does. We, individually and collectively, are responsible for allowing it to happen. Irish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

If we know there is corporal punishment at school we need to stop it. We need to decide on which side we are on, what is best for the nation, and take whatever action is deemed necessary. If the nation is to move forward, corporal punishment must not continue, even if that means emptying the schools of all the ignorant, compassionless so-called ‘teachers’.

It is far better to have a happy and healthy uneducated child than to have a child that goes through life maimed or tormented and psychologically damaged by the demonic thoughts of the corporal punishment they suffered. A damaged child today is a damaged adult tomorrow.

* STUDENT POWER: Recently students in a school in Baringo, Kenya, chanted ‘enough is enough’ and walked out over alleged mistreatment and corporal punishment by ‘teachers’.

Over 500 students from Tenges High school trekked for about 30 kilometres to Kabarnet town demanding immediate transfer of their principal. The school has a population of 1,200.

Sir Frank Peters is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, an award- winning writer, a humanitarian, a royal goodwill ambassador and a long-time friend of Bangladesh.