Dear Editor,
On the NCN radio breakfast show of November 19, 2007, the two hosts were discussing corporal punishment. One of them said words to the effect, “In the good old days many of us were flogged in school but we never became violent. Flogging was the norm at school and it kept many of us in line.” The breakfast host overlooks some vital points that so many others also miss.
Those who were flogged and did graduate to violence would never broadcast on the airwaves or write columns or letters in the newspapers boasting of their violent disposition. Some of them might even be unable to write anything at all due to flogging-driven illiteracy or being in jail or lying in an unmarked grave. An analogy can be drawn with smoking tobacco. Persons who smoke five packs a day and live to a ripe old age without developing lung cancer will boast that smoking is harmless. Not so those who smoke and develop lung cancer – unless the story is forced from them. That more people survive disasters than are killed by disasters does not mean that disasters are necessary and healthy experiences. Many of us are fortunate survivors of the disaster of corporal punishment.
While it is true that many of us who were flogged do not beat others, we do condone violence meted out on others. When people of other ethnic groups are beaten, violated, discriminated against and marginalized we utter not a peep of protest. Some persons even believe that beating people of other “races” can have a positive impact! Even though many of us do not commit violence, we have a high tolerance of violence in all of its forms.
This is why some media houses can plaster vivid images of violent death all across their front page. Our violent national history in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and in recent years certainly does not reflect well on the effectiveness of flogging that the violators may have received in their youth.
As for flogging being the norm at school in the so-called “good old days,” it was an illegal norm. The present regulations that govern the administering of school corporal punishment became law in 1943 and were reaffirmed in 1973. In the vast majority of cases where flogging was administered it was done so in flagrant breach of the regulations. Few of us can remember whether or not the regulations were observed when we were flogged. In fact, most teachers, and perhaps all students, were totally ignorant of the laws on school corporal punishment.
Part of the genesis of accepted illegalities among us today is found in the illegality that we were forced to accept as children in the institutionalized school setting. On the one hand we were taught law and order; on the other hand, teachers broke the law and disregarded order when they illegally flogged us.
Instead of boasting that our teachers regularly flogged us and good apparently came out of it, we must recognize that illegal acts were done to us. When we begin to acknowledge the evil that was done to us and stop idealizing the violent pedagogy that schooled us, then we may begin to heal psychologically, and the anger that simmers beneath our fa?e of peace will start to dissipate.
Yours faithfully,
M. Xiu Quan-Balgobind-
Hackett
