Photo credit: the Punch
Thank God some of my elementary school mates, juniors and even seniors are on Facebook.
I happened to have attended Methodist Primary School, 13, Subuola Street, Surulere in Lagos State. We knew the security personnel there as, ‘Baba elegba’.
Roughly interpreted into the English language, it means the man who usually held a cane!
But sadly, the translation is not sufficient. That’s because the man wasn’t only holding a cane. He used canes a lot.
Who did he use canes on?
Pupils, of course!
In fact, I would think even teachers did not use canes on pupils as much as Baba Elegba.
Truly, we were a troublesome lot then. But, if it had been today, would he have had that right?
In the past, there was this belief that cane didn’t kill children. And, in any case who were we going to report to?
But these days, even secondary school teachers do not have any right to cane pupils. Only the Principal is allowed to. The Principal may however assign teachers the responsibility of caning erring pupils.
But, when we really look at it, is caning worth it?
We have seen several cases of pupils dying while or immediately after being caned.
Second, several researches have come to the conclusion that rather than correcting behavior, caning actually makes the recipients much more hardened.
They would know it’s not more than caning when they commit the gravest of offences.
The other dimension is that of parents. They are getting more enlightened now and quite a few of them are objecting to the caning of their children.
We’ve had cases of parents actually going to their wards’ schools and fighting teachers who had earlier caned their children. Some of them would even use canes on the poor teachers.
I would rather let the child see what they had done wrong. After that, counseling will follow. At the very worst, the children should be given punishments that would disable them from enjoying their favorite pastimes.
Play!
In fact, I’ve been in situations where the children had to be begging me to beat them instead of denying them from burning their energies.
Corporal punishment is a thing of the past!
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