22 February 2001, 817 words
Even if there weren't a plethora of good arguments against corporal punishment, the fact that Maha Sabha head Sat Maharaj is in favour of beating children would be a powerful reason to abolish it. In his Guardian column of February 17, Maharaj writes: "The withdrawal of a teacher's right to administer corporal punishment to any student...is a retrograde step and will, in due course, wreak havoc on the education system."
The pompous tone, of course, is intended to hide Maharaj's basically barbarous mindset. This, after all, is a man who has vehemently defended the right of big men to marry 14-year-old Hindu girls and who publishes a semi-pornographic newspaper every week. So it is reasonable to assume that Sat Maharaj has no real concern about children or conventional morality.
Maharaj is, in my opinion, the third biggest hypocrite in this country, the first two being Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Pastor Cuffie (in that order). Cuffie, a man dumb enough to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and who now loudly boasts a doctorate from a non-accredited U.S. university, will soon be opening his own school. Ramesh, who has been touring schools to popularise himself among the nation's youth, favours lowering the hanging age to include minors. That such people are all placed, in one way or another, to harm the nation's children speaks volumes about our society.
What exacerbates the potential for harm is that usually reasonable persons have also come down in favour of corporal punishment. Sunday Express columnist Raffique Shah, who promotes liberal values, wrote a column detailing his own bad experiences with corporal punishment but still concluded that it was necessary. Shah's position was the one pro-licks people (including, notably, former Local Government Minister Dhanraj Singh) invariably adopt, which I call the Argument by Conceit: "Look, I was beaten and I turned out fine".
In similar vein, Newsday columnist Marion O' Callaghan writes that she agreed with the measure, but "between flogging and security guards, I choose flogging". This is a woman who writes extensively about the tenets of a democratic, tolerant and egalitarian society. She is also a staunch Catholic and the Church is against corporal punishment: but all that is insufficient to compensate for her older-generation, religion-fixed mindset.
As with capital punishment, people who are in favour of licks seem incapable of rational thought. The case against capital punishment is absolute: there is no good moral, ethical, legal or empirical argument in favour of it. In similar fashion, all the psychological and sociological evidence shows that giving children licks at best does no good and at worst perpetuates the ills it is supposed to eliminate.
Check every violent criminal in jail: I bet every one received plenty licks at home and in school. Check every child who gives real trouble in school: I bet their parents are liberal with the blows as well. Yet, even if the evidence weren't against it, simple logic would suggest that banning corporal punishment is a good move. If licks was so effective, then we should by now have a society entirely free of violence.
The counter-argument that reducing licks brought us to this pass is so moronic that I feel stupid even to point out its several fallacies: for example, that middle-class children, who are less likely to be beaten that working-class ones, should therefore be much more likely to be violent and undisciplined; or that Japan, which banned corporal punishment in schools since 1879, has one of the most crime-free societies in the world.
An especially favourite twist of the above argument is "Look at what's happening in schools in the United States because they don't beat children". Apart from the fact that there are many nations which don't have corporal punishment and very successful education systems, any comparison between the U.S. and us on this matter is bogus.
America is the third largest country in the world and by far the richest. That tragedies like the Columbine School massacre happen is not a sign of social chaos: that such events do not occur more frequently in an easily-armed population of 260 million is actually a sign of how stable American society is. (More children die in India and China every day, but from abuse and malnutrition and overwork: so you tell me which society is the more civilized.)
As my fellow columnist Donna Yawching has pointed out, the violent children our violent culture has produced aren't going to vanish with the abolition of corporal punishment. Progress takes time and effort and the ability to think in the long term. The protests we hear are nothing but this society's adults, who all had the benefit of licks, trying in infantile fashion to avoid responsibility for the monsters they have created.
Copyright ©2002 Kevin Baldeosingh