IT came in an e-mail. A reader sent me a clip and asked me to watch it. I clicked on the link and the video clip began; it seemed to be in a schoolroom and I saw a male teacher holding a long electrical cord in his hand. In front of him was a young boy of 12 or 13, crying and pleading while the teacher shouted at him to hold his hands up so that his palms could be lashed by the cord. This went on for a minute or more and all I could do was concentrate on the expression of horror on the boy’s face as he was beaten by an angry monster. When the clip had finished, I could not bring myself back to reality; the boy’s pitiful face was stuck in my mind.
This clip raises some questions about our educational system — the rights of students and the rights of teachers to discipline students. Most interestingly, however, it adds a few more images to those captured and distributed by Bluetooth. In the past year or so, several cases of criminal behavior have been brought to the attention of the authorities because of a digital file sent from one phone to another. These include a rape case in Riyadh; another was of girls being harassed on a street in Riyadh and now, the latest to stir discussion and anger is the boy being beaten.
The public outcry concerning all these stories has been so great that the authorities have been forced to investigate and punish the wrongdoers. The means by which these stories have been publicized is one more example of how technology is affecting our lives. Some of the online comments concerning the beating have been disappointing; some people say that teachers have to cope with all kinds of bad behavior and that sometimes they have no choice but to physically punish unruly students. Such people often recall their own experiences and how they were punished as students.
It is certainly true that for years teachers punished students physically — indeed many of us have experienced that kind of punishment. The point remains, of course, that physical punishment often has severe psychological effects and may lead to very serious cases of abuse. At present, physical punishment is banned from schools in the Kingdom and in many other countries as well. Seriously, I wonder what the argument is for corporal punishment. Many people see it as a means of disciplining children; others see it as their right to strike disobedient wives. No matter what the argument, God gave us minds which should be used to get our message across without having to resort to physical force and violence.
The Center for Effective Discipline (CED), a non-profit organization providing information on the effects of corporal punishment on children and alternatives to its use, has published research that shows the side-effects of corporal punishment. To quote from the organization’s website:
1. Children who are spanked the most are more likely to be aggressive and strike others.
2. Children who are hit because of antisocial behavior are likely to exhibit more, rather than less, antisocial behavior.
3. Hitting children teaches acceptance of violence.
4. While most of us who were spanked as children grew up to be healthy adults, spanking can cause anxiety, contribute to feelings of helplessness and humiliation and often provoke anger and a desire for revenge — feelings which have often been repressed in adults but may lead to depression, adult violence and hitting our own children.
5. Effective discipline exists. It does not involve hitting and humiliating children.
To continue the discussion, we should look at research recently published in the Saudi press. The research shows that Saudi society is becoming more violent and that those most affected by this increase in violence are women, children and the elderly.
The research stressed the importance of creating some kind of national body for social protection. The researchers are well aware that many people will view such a body as an intrusion into family privacy — but if family privacy is marred by violence, it should be intruded into.
The conclusion of the research is very alarming but if we look at it in the context of the increase in crime-related local newspaper stories, the picture becomes very clear. Things which never happened twenty years ago are now common and we have reached the stage where things will not get better unless something is done and society reacts to the need for collective action to find ways to stop the violence.
