Some parents, albeit not all have gotten a sigh of relief after Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a historic bill banning corporal punishment for children, but the bill applies to federal territory only. The surge in high profile cases of children being badly beaten in schools, in religious seminaries and physical abuse of child labourers at workplaces are flaring up as a new breeding ground of punishments that often leads to the killing of voiceless children.
Inhumane punishments have a negative imprint left on the child’s willingness to attend school and slashes their academic performance by more than half. In Pakistan, corporal punishment is a major reason for children between the ages of 5 and 16 not attending a school—that alone constitutes 44 percent of out-of-school children. In addition to other challenges, students facing physical assault have poor learning outcomes, corporal punishment has links to arising mental health problems and abnormal behavioural changes that are the cause of violent tendencies in adulthood. Further evidence suggests that corporal punishment in childhood is the strongest reason for early-age depression, pessimism and developing hostility towards society which increases vulnerability to radicalisation in adulthood.
In the absence of robust legislation at the provincial level and the failure of governments to amend existing laws, the issues remain unaddressed. Pakistan Penal Code’s (PPC) colonial-era Section 89 deals with the physical assault inflicted on a child by parents, or guardian for his/her benefit, remain valid in the provinces despite the Islamabad High Court suspending its use in the capital. This section equips parents, guardians, and teachers with the power to employ the use of corporal punishment for disciplining a child under the age of 12.
Pakistan is in the list of 69 countries, including 19 states of the US legally permitting corporal punishment in schools, as part of the conventional pedagogical method to discipline students by holding them accountable for their naive actions and make them do their work, perhaps for a better future. Despite the UN’s commitment to declaring corporal punishment a form of violence against children, teachers continue to employ these tactics for their ease.
However, Islamabad has taken its first step towards reaffirming its commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1990, bypassing a bill that bans all types of corporal punishment at formal and informal workplaces and in various educational settings. The effective implementation of laws is yet another challenging task for the government, while the proponents of anti-corporal punishment believe that laws in Pakistan are merely for book readings, with zero implementation.
Of course, legislation may not suffice alone to address the growing issue of corporal punishment. There is a lack of awareness among the teacher, who are unaware of the detrimental effects corporal punishment could have on one’s mental health. Hence, it’s the need of the hour to introduce alternative methods of teaching, ways to maintain discipline students and produce quality work from them. Some phycological studies have suggested that pedagogues, who have bitter experiences of being subjected to corporal punishment in their childhood, are the ones practicing it with the next generation. Besides enacting legislation, initiatives must be taken to change the perception about corporal punishment among educators through interactive training and sending out a positive message of learning without punishment to break the decades’-old cultural norm of the South-Asian society we inherited.
Beyond introducing legal reforms, Pakistan needs to disseminate literature on school sanctions, and how educators should deal with behavioural changes, discipline issues and punishment in the school, which serve as alternatives to corporal punishment as followed by the developed world. Additionally, to reinforce positive behaviour in students, schools should seek the support of phycologists and the counsellors to provide emotional support and identify work on the root cause of increased aggressiveness, anxiety and depression found in the students. In cases when ignoring indiscipline is impossible—which could have a negative impact—then punishment should be used sparingly and must be coupled with explanation to acquaint parents and their children for reason of their punishments. These steps toward positive reinforcement, as opposed to cruel punishment, will encourage students to depict good behaviour.