Dear Editor,
I was stunned to read the news article: “Immediate Expulsion for Children whose Parents Abuse Teachers” in the January 13th, 2023, issue of the Guyana Chronicle, especially as this proclamation managed to make it from the Chief Education Officer, past the Minster of Education, and the Editor of the state newspaper. Did the reality of this proclamation not cause pause for reason?
No one would disagree that our nation’s teachers have difficult circumstances, and they deserve better, especially safe workplaces. Assaulting a teacher is a criminal offence. We already have a penal system for addressing this offence, one based on natural justice, which punishes the perpetrator of the crime and not a third party, and presumably one in which the penalty is proportional to the crime.
It is unfair and unjust to hold children responsible for the actions of their parents. Children are not capable of understanding or controlling their parent’s actions and should not be held accountable for them. Additionally, punishing a child in this way can cause emotional and psychological harm, and can negatively impact their development. Instead, it is important to address the root causes of violent behaviour and focus on rehabilitation and education, rather than punishment.
Teachers have been assaulted at various schools for years now. It would be helpful to see a rigorous effort by the Ministry of Education to educate the public and parents on Grievance Procedures, or any public education programme aimed at helping parents understand what to do and not to do in addressing grievances. What protocols are in place to prevent teacher on student abuse or student on student abuse? What are the procedures for a parent to bring a complaint and time frame in which it would be resolved? Is the system fair and consistent? Does it involve independent review? Is there a transparent, timely, and accountable appeals process? How are the procedures communicated to parents, and to the public at large to reach parents who may have work hours that prevent attendance at school meetings?
At a more fundamental level, one must wonder why the Ministry of Education and Chief Education Officer feel so entitled to parents choosing non-violent ways of resolving conflicts when it is our very education system that has inculcated brute force as the means of communicating and forcing our will on other people. One does not have to look far from the schooling system to help explain why Guyana is plagued with senseless interpersonal violence every day.
The Ministry of Education, through teachers, has for decades been teaching skills of violence to citizens. Teachers continue to physically assault our children in classrooms. This state sponsored violence is labelled “corporal punishment”, a term that conceptually distances and shades what this truly is: physical assault. We justify physical assault by claiming that it is necessary for achieving ‘discipline’ in children. If one cannot achieve discipline in children through reasoning, then the problem is not with the children. In any case, physical assault may achieve compliance, and compliance is not discipline.
Beating children is a terrible form of miseducation. I remember how much time my parents had to invest in helping me to unlearn what I learned in school from teachers hitting us – in teaching me that lashing out and hitting was not a way to communicate or to achieve a goal. Today, many parents are struggling and working inordinate hours under stressful and denigrating circumstances just to put food on the table for their children. They are under chronic stress. How many parents have the time to invest in corrective education for their children? Many may not even know how to do so given that they have themselves been childhood victims of school beatings and have internalized physical domination as a means of navigating life’s challenges.
State sponsored child assault must end in schools. We must instead invest heavily in training our teachers, children, and parents in conflict resolution and communication skills in school settings, and in public informal education for citizens at large. This casually cruel proclamation that the Ministry of Education will punish children with expulsion for their parent’s behaviour must be withdrawn.
Sincerely,
Simone Mangal-Joly
