Dear Friends and lovers of hard
work, creativity, innovation, teamwork and success,welcome to my
corner “Naza’s Corner”! Before I continue, let me remind you that my name is “Chinazaekpere”,
“God answers prayer”. I am a Junior Secondary School (JSS)
student, living in Jos, the Plateau state capital. Considering, how important
we are to each other, especially what we stand to gain, working together, as
friends, I wish to introduce Comfort
Ocheje, a student of Shekinah
High School, Jos, a Kingdom minded, success driven student and goal
getter into the forum. Please join me to welcome her. She has an article for us. Enjoy her piece entitled: PUNISHMENT
OF STUDENTS BY TEACHERS
Students face challenges in schools. The challenges include:
- Delay in the Payment of school fees
- Difficulty coping with their academics
- Punishment by teachers and fellow students, etc.
My focus today is on punishment of Students by Teachers. According to
the Oxford Dictionary, punishment means “To impose a penalty on someone”. Similarly,
School is defined by the same Dictionary as “An educational institution”. The same
Dictionary defines a Teacher as “A person who teaches people to acquire
knowledge”.
For better understanding of this discussion, I wish to explain what I
mean by punishment. It is severe punishment, torture, excessive lashing or flogging
that most times results to injuries on the students.
In most secondary schools there’re high rate of torture. In such schools,
teachers punish students because they did not know a particular subject, not
because they committed any offense. In a particular school for example, a
teacher flogged a student severely because he failed his subject. To me this is
very wrong. Instead of inflicting that level of pain or torture on the student,
the punishment would have been lighter, if the teacher must punish the student.
I think, what the student needs is encouragement and support from the teacher.
This is likely to make the student improve gradually.
Teachers should not punish students anyhow. This is because it
discourages them from learning. Some teachers think that students can learn by
force, but that is a lie. Students can only learn by gradual process. Teachers,
who are fond of punishing students unnecessarily, should be identified and
cautioned against such and if they are not ready to change, should be given the
treatment they deserve. There is a saying ‘You can take a horse to the river
but you cannot force it to drink’ (author unknown).
Teachers should allow students to learn without undue punishment. For
me, punishment is not wrong but excess of it (torture) is bad and that is what
I am against. My friend told me that in her school (boarding school), every
Junior Secondary School (JSS 1) student is flogged heavily at admission into
the school by fellow students (the seniors) and the Teachers are aware.
According to her this is called welcome to JSS 1. Is this not torture?
I have seen cases where students leave school because of excessive punishment.
Excessive punishment should be discouraged, so that students will learn freely
without any fear. The claim by some teachers that they punish students because
they have no other option should be looked into. There is always the alternative
to things. The case of students and punishment meted to them should not be
different.
Till next time, when I will be discussing in detail the punishment of
Junior Students by their Seniors I wish to say good bye friends.
By: Comfort Ocheje
Student,
Shekinah High School, Jos
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