Tag: Corporal Punishment in Classrooms

‘Muzaffarnagar Slapping Incident Blown Out Of Proportion, Given Communal Colour’

By LokMarg

Ranveer Singh, principal of Government Inter College, Kamhera, Muzaffarnagar, says the slapping incident was given a Hindu-Muslim colour by vested political interests. His views:

For a teacher, the betterment and a bright future of his or her students are top priority. The guru-shishya parampara is deeply rooted in our culture and tradition where the shishya (student) must master the knowledge that the guru or teacher embodies. To achieve this end, a teacher may also use some corrective discipline to keep the student focused on his or her learning. The slapping incident in a Muzaffarnagar school must be seen in this light and not from a communal lens.

Let me clarify here that personally I am against any kind of corporal punishment or humiliation of a child at the school because it may impact his or her psyche adversely for life. As a student, I often faced the wrath of my teachers who believed in ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ principle. School punishments were an acceptable reality to both teachers and parents in our schooling days. However, times have changed and our education system must adopt more humane method to impart knowledge.

This is also an era of mobile technology where a seemingly unintended action can be captured on phone camera, given a twist and spread via social media – sometimes causing selective outrage. This is actually what happened in this particular incident, where an act of classroom discipline was filmed and blown out of proportion with a communal angle. Thankfully, the student’s parents did not fall in the trap and elders of the region made classmates hug each other to bury the matter in time.

However, the video clip kept appearing on the prime time of national and local news channels. If you ask around in the Muzaffarnagar belt, people will laugh at the issue being magnified to this level of importance; for most local residents such incidents are commonplace. When it comes to teaching, different yardsticks apply in semi-urban or tier 2-3 towns and in metropolitan cities. However, this is not to say that the teacher was not on the wrong. An FIR has been registered against her and an enquiry has been ordered into the incident. And rightly so.

ALSO READ: Muzaffarnagar Slapping Has Scarred A Little Boy For Life

But I believe that most of those showing outrage had zero concern for the punished schoolchild. His photographs were made public with impunity, without realising that the boy could have forgotten the few slaps in the classroom but now would have to live with the public shaming of his humiliation.

The incident also provided an opportunity for some vested interest to corner the ruling dispensation. Physical punishments in schools is a social concern; turning it into a political finger-pointing to settle scores cannot address the issue. As a society we need to expose such propaganda and guard our social fabric.

No person in the academia will defend the action of the schoolteacher as there are other ways to discipline a child than physical punishment. A teacher must show compassion and calmness in the classroom to set an example. This is where the said teacher failed in her duty. But to showcase this incident as communal poison will be taking things too far.

This incident must serve as a lesson to all the teachers who often lose their temper in a classroom. The role of a guru is sacred and must remain unblemished with proper conduct with his or her students. Or else, teachers will lose the respect and status which they enjoy in Indian society today.

As told to Rajat Rai

‘Muzaffarnagar Slapping Incident Has Scarred A Little Boy For Life’

By LokMarg

Professor Ratna Raman, who teaches literature at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University, says callous, inhuman adults like Tripta Tyagi must never interact with children. Her views:

What happened at a school in Muzaffarnagar, western UP, is a shameful and dreadful incident. My gut reaction was of visceral shock followed by disbelief, and, then, a creeping wave of disgust and anguish engulfed me about ground realities at a time when the idea of India as ‘Vishwaguru’ is being propounded in public forums nationwide.

Corporal punishment, meted out to any recalcitrant child, is unacceptable. Instructing classmates to deliver hard slaps to a child from a minority community for not finishing the work allotted to him is a heinous crime. Tripta Tyagi, the teacher, has released into the lives of all the children in the classroom a very toxic substance that will continue to traumatise them in the day to come.

One anguished little boy will remain vulnerable and fearful because of this brutal chastisement. The boys who were asked to thrash him are being trained to unleash violence. Shamefully, such action is being spearheaded by an ‘authority-figure’, namely their teacher, who is automatically a role model for her students. I wonder what other children from minority communities are being subjected to and what their families are going through in these difficult times!

Callous, inhuman adults should never be allowed to interact with children and punishment for Tripta Tyagi should be severe. At the least, she should be put behind bars and stopped from both teaching and running any academic institution.

ALSO READ: Communal Hatred In The Classroom

We must also realize that this is not an odd incident. There is a lot of violence directed at children by authority-figures, both, at home, and at school. Of late, virulent hostility towards Muslims in all facets of our public life has been rampant. This aggressive virulence is now propelling its way into schools across the country wherein a section of teachers and administrators from the majority community are going out of their way in crushing the spirit of hapless young children and are actively fomenting hatred between communities.

This sickness continues to spread unabated and is now consuming and damaging hapless children in its wake. Every other day, disheartening narratives are brought to our notice by the odd newspaper report. This is a terrible time and space for children.

I think, teachers, especially those who wear their religious faith on their sleeves, should be re-educated about what it means to be human. It should be reiterated that a teacher’s responsibility is to nurture and mould young hearts and minds to recognize the plural, secular and multifaceted world that we all inhabit. They should be reminded that this fragile world is all we have left.

Perhaps, the New Education Policy should introduce a new anthem for schools and schoolteachers: ‘Na Hindu na Musalman na Isaih banega, insaan ki aulad hai nsaan banega.’ This is the ‘one-nation-one people-one song’ that we need to learn by rote, internalise and sing at the top of our voices. We also need endless dialogue, because we cannot force ideas upon people, we can only offer these as important possibilities.

Instead of teaching our young about diverse and varied histories and cultures, we, the citizens of India, are allowing the rewriting of fabricated histories, the truncation and obliteration of uncomfortable truths, along with the bowdlerization of education and the bulldozing of great traditions and institutions. Into this Amrit Kaal, we are all being propelled by the juggernaut of uniformly manufactured consent. Perhaps, it is time that civil society broke the confining shackles in order to meet the challenges facing it.

The narrator holds a doctoral dissertation on Doris Lessing and she is the author of Re-envisioning Feminism: The Fiction of Doris Lessing (Bloomsbury). Prof Raman writes on food, culture, travel, fiction, cinema and contemporary affairs for various newspapers and journals. Her blog, In the Midst of Life can be found at ratnaraman.blogspot.com

As told to Amit Sengupta