A madrasa teacher’s wrath on an eight-year-old

The recent video of the violent beating of an eight-year-old by a madrasa teacher shows the impunity that authority figures in our educational institutions still enjoy. The event took place when the parents of the victim came to visit him on his birthday. As they were leaving, the little boy tried to tag along with them, and thus caused the wrath of the teacher who then mercilessly beat him with a cane. We are relieved that the teacher has been sacked from his job and also sent to jail by a Chattogram court.

The above case is not an isolated incident, however. According to Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum (BSAF), a total of 69 children became victims of physical abuse in educational institutions across the country in the first six months of 2018 alone. In 2013, more than 150 students were beaten by an assistant teacher of the Gulta Government Primary School in Tarash upazila, Sirajganj. After the incident, thirty students were unable to attend their classes due to injuries caused by the beating.

We should understand that corporal punishment is mostly an outlet for adults to vent out their frustration, not an attempt to educate children. It causes direct physical harm to the children and negatively impacts their psychological health. It may increase aggression in them and culminate into violence in intimate relationships once they grow up. There are correlations between being physically punished as a child and perpetrating domestic violence in adulthood. This is why taking prompt action to curb the practice of inflicting physical and mental torture on minors has become the need of the hour.

The Education Ministry had issued a guideline to prohibit corporal punishment in 2011, which was basically based on a judgment by the High Court terming physical and psychological punishment in educational institutions as a violation of children's rights, in particular their fundamental rights guaranteed under article 27, 31, 32 and 35(5) of the constitution. It's imperative that this guideline is enforced properly to protect our children from early-life violence. The ministry is reportedly in the final stage of preparing the draft of a new law that includes a provision for imposing a ban on corporal punishment and mental torture inflicted by teachers on schoolchildren. The process of turning this draft into an active law must gain pace so that legal provisions can get stronger in combating this heinous crime as soon as possible.

Most importantly, the parents should also stop displaying unquestioned reverence towards teachers no matter how they behave with their wards, as it ultimately gives them the license to inflict such cruel treatment on students with total impunity. We hope that the madrasa teacher whose brutality was caught on camera will face swift justice, and that it will serve as a deterrent to other perpetrators of corporal punishment.