Recently, a student at a Nyamira secondary school committed suicide when a teacher confiscated her mobile phone, and read out to the school her romantic text messages.
At Nairobi primary school, a student has sued the institution after two teachers forced a girl to — get this — masturbate as punishment for allegedly having many boyfriends. In Homa Bay County, a principle (now in police custody) striped a girl naked for wearing a mini skirt to school. At Meta Meta, some students almost rioted when the deputy head teacher threatened to cut their hair short.
Many teachers across the country are at a loss on the best forms of punishment. The Ministry of Education has done little to equip them with relevant skills.
Consequently, types of punishments are as varied as the number of teachers. Vasco Da Gama argues that today’s students are delicate and must be handled with utmost care. He even has a theory to support his views. “Most of us grew up like the ancient Spartans.
Our diet consisted of potatoes, cassava, arrow roots and boiled maize and beans. Wild fruits and berries on our way to and from school would fill in the void. At the crack of dawn, one ran to school tens of kilometres away. Soap was a luxury and most of us washed our faces and feet in any stream we came across.
For others, the morning dew on the cold grass and leaves would do. This made us hardy and able to withstand all sorts of punishments including being literally hurled out of a classroom,” he observes.
“Today, most kids would end up in the ICU if they touched cold water in the morning,” he closes his theory with a sneer. At Meta Meta, the nature of punishment depends on a teacher’s ‘innovativeness’ and level of frustration. Some punishments, like making a student smash a confiscated mobile phone, with a hammer have been endorsed by parents. This hasn’t deterred many from carrying them to school.
A national school in Nyanza used to make students caught with cell phones drop them into a pit latrine as the rest watched. Donatta used to tell students to lie flat on the dusty floor for various class-related offenses.
She changed her mind when she discovered some boys looking up her short skirt. Schola on the other hand, orders noise makers to hold up posters with messages such as, “My parents pay fees for me to make noise!”
The Meta Meta school canteen is run by the teachers’ welfare association and for the sake of hygiene — and some profit — students are not allowed to buy anything from the kiosks across the fence.
Taped mouth
These kiosks, however, make bigger mandazi and students prefer them. If caught, the culprit would buy each member of the form a mandazi. This punishment was discontinued when a parent took a carton full of mandazi to the County Education Director’s office.
Kevo, Form 2G, had been seen by Schola buying mandazi from the prohibited kiosks. Sentence was passed. He didn’t have the money and went home to collect it. On relating the matter to his guardian — a paternal aunt — the pair went and bought the mandazis, but instead of bringing them to Meta Meta for sharing among Kevo’s classmates, they made for the director’s office.
Dumping them on the director’s table, the aunt narrated how Okonkwo was forcing students to buy mandazi for teachers. The principal received a call advising him to urgently go and collect ‘his carton of mandazi’. The director also complained that his office had been made to smell like a food kiosk.
Weird punishments don’t only happen in Kenya. In many Asian schools, kneeling on frozen peas, corn or rice is a form of punishment. In a school in the state of Arizona, US, boys who fought were ‘sentenced’ to hold hands in view of others for a certain duration of time. And in Asia, a teacher, frustrated by a noisy student ‘closed’ the girl’s mouth with adhesive tape! Yes, he sellotaped her mouth.
