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January 13, 2019 was the eighth anniversary of Supreme Court of Bangladesh's banning corporal punishment in schools and madrasahs. Today, try to convince some pupils that corporal punishment has been banned and they may laugh at you. It is still 'business as usual' for them.
It is amazing how un-hinged society can become if you do not pay attention to the smaller details. Take for example violence in society. The majority of God-loving, God-fearing inhabitants of society (99.9 per cent) detest and abhor violence.
They are all unanimous in thought that such barbaric actions could not possibly be good for the development of humankind or bring them closer to God. Nobody in their right mind wants to see a loved one being brutalised and in great pain from a violent attack.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: Most people would agree corporal punishment cannot be blamed entirely for all the violence in society, but, no doubt, it is a major contributing factor.
Let us look at life momentarily through the eyes of a child. We are all products of our environment. Our thinking is honed, our minds are developed and our learning begins from within that environment - good or bad.
Poverty is not a child's number one enemy; ignorance is. Whatever the child sees and experiences is how things are, it is the world they know. If a home is predominantly violent, violence is as natural to them as the 'roti' they eat at breakfast and that is what they expect the outside world to be.
If there is love in the homes, schools and madrasahs that is also what they learn and expect the outside world to be and respond accordingly. Violence and love cannot co-exist.
A child's mind is like a sponge and absolutely trusting. It will soak-in, without much questioning (or none) what is presented to it, especially if encouraged by a figure of authority, parent or teacher.
It has a child-like faith and trust that the authority figure knows what she/he is doing and would not mislead them. A teacher or parent, however, can only teach what they themselves know. It is a known fact that in Bangladesh, there is a lot of scope for improvement.
While the qualifications and abilities of some people to teach may need to be questioned in the best interests of the children and the nation, there is no justification whatsoever for violence in the form of corporal punishment to be taught in the classrooms.
HOME VIOLENCE: The two predominant areas in a child's life to learn violence are in the home and in the school. While the home presents only a small selective audience and the violence is confined, perhaps, to only one child.
The school is different. The audience is considerably larger, the influence is substantially greater and given time can spread, pollute and damage an entire commu-nity.
School is not a place where violence should be taught. No school should be a hellhole for any child (or teacher). A classroom is no place for bullies, sadists, mentally disturbed 'teachers' or where fear and violence is bred.
Neither should it be a place where the once-in-a-lifetime gift of angelic youth, fun, and joy is beaten out, and the horrific blight of hatred, anger, despise for society, and hellish revenge, are beaten in.
Dr. Dharmakanta Kumbhakar, a pathologist at the Tezpur Medical College, Tezpur, Assam, recently wrote: "Children are the supreme asset of a nation. They are the greatest hope for the future of a nation. Every nation, developed or developing, links its future with the status of their children."
He then went on to say: "The future of a nation rests on healthy, protected, educated and well-developed children. They are the potential and useful human resources for the progress of a nation.
Ignoring or neglecting the children means wasting the supreme national asset and loss to the nation as a whole."
He further added, "If children are deprived of their childhood-socially, economically, physically and mentally-the nation gets deprived of the potential human resources for social progress, economic empowerment, peace and order, social stability and good citizenry."
To protect the supreme assets of Bangladesh on January 13, 2011, High Court Divisional bench comprising of Justice Md Imman Ali and Justice Md Sheikh Hassan Arif outlawed corporal punishment in Bangladesh schools and madrasahs declaring it to be: "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and a clear violation of a child's fundamental right to life, liberty and freedom".
While we can never eradicate violence in society totally, we can erase corporal punishment. It does not help to have the fundamentals of violence taught in our schools to impressionable minds by 'teachers' paid from the nation's coffers.
We can draw a line under the violence that exists today; write it off to ignorance of the past, make a fresh start, engage the necessary changes, eliminate the teaching of violence from the schools and madrasahs and bequeath future generations with a worthy of their gratitude and pride.
Sir Frank Peters is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, a royal goodwill ambassador, a humanitarian and a respected foreign non-political friend of Bangladesh.