Should canning be reintroduced in schools?

The mad season is here with us again. The education sector is once again on the spotlight. This time it has nothing to do with reform or overhaul of the wrongly vilified 8-4-4 system.

The happenings in some of our schools take us back to 2008 when students in number of schools rioted and burned dormitories.

Opinions as to the causes of strikes and burning of dormitories have been advanced from various quarters. There have been suggestions that caning should be re-introduced and students expelled from schools should not be admitted in any other school anywhere.

I am totally against re-introduction of caning. This will roll back gains that we have witnessed since enactment of Children’s Act, 2001. This Act enhanced age of a child from 16 to 18 years, outlawed female genital mutilation and caning.

Demerits of caning outweigh merits. Caning subjects children to fear. It has been one of the leading causes of truancy and has led to an increase in dropout rates.

When I think about caning a disturbing images come into my mind. I remember when we were in class five during those days when eating two square meals and wearing shoes to school was a privilege. Two of my classmates, boys aged around 13 years had played truant probably because of hunger. Our class teacher proceeded to give them 65 strokes of the cane! Your guess is as good as mine because for those boys that marked their last day in school.

Most of us contemplated quitting school then. The only thing that kept us in was the no-nonsense nature of our parents and the fact that they appreciated value of education. Many pupils fell by the wayside.

Fast forward to 2016 where although efforts have been made to rehabilitate our schools like connecting them to electricity grid, providing tampons to schoolgirls and school feeding programs, challenges still remain.

One notable challenge our teachers are facing is the abdication of parenting roles by respective parents. Instead of parents disciplining, mentoring, guiding and counselling their own children, they have left that role to teachers. Teachers are now supposed to correct the effects of bad parenting. Parents only pamper their children by taking them on outings, holidays and buying them gifts and presents to make up for the time they have been missing in action.

These absentee parents can’t afford time for their children leaving them at the mercy of house girls, internet and movies. They are the ones who will feign shock and disbelief on receiving news that their sons or daughters have been arrested for arson, rape and other capital offences.

Despite being faced with challenges, I strongly advocate against expulsion of students from schools. One of the Millennium Development Goals is to keep children in school up to the age of eighteen years.

Expelling them will only exacerbate the situation. We will be exposing them to hardened criminals. Juvenile delinquents are the worst type of criminals because they are willing to take risks, are naïve, inexperienced and have the eagerness and curiosity to prove their machoism to their peers and older criminals. I lost my high school desk mate to these hoodlums. Apparently, he underestimated them and tried to take them on without realizing they had a gun. Faced with the prospect of being overpowered, they shot him dead.

East lands area is dominated by these juvenile gangs. They live for the moment their only mantra being, Get rich or die trying. Anyone who lives in East lands will attest to it that these juveniles are the worst kind of criminals to encounter. A 15 year old gun-wielding delinquent is a danger not only to his victim but also to himself. It’s better to encounter an ‘experienced criminal’.

We should not forget that these adolescents are in a transitional phase. We are also bombarding them with information about joblessness, corruption, nepotism and tribalism in our newspapers, blogs, radios and TVs. We are leading them to a chasm of desperation at a high speed.

Let us go back to our schools support, mentor, counsel and guide and give hope to these young adults. It’s a collective responsibility. Parents should move from the periphery and take center stage in socializing their children.

With a view of the above, it is advisable to review the punishment of expulsion and not to think about re-introduction of caning.