Sunday October 28, 2007
No cruel punishment
By KAVIDHA NATARAJAN
The Convention of Children's Rights (CRC) states that children should not be subjected to cruel and harmful punishment
I was all gung ho as I set out to write this article, but then something interesting happened. Or rather, I interviewed some interesting people. The first 18-year-old I spoke to said she didn’t care about children’s right and that she wasn’t a child anymore. Her friends were of the same mind.
Fortunately, I soon found other peers who were interested to look at the Articles in the Convention of Children's Rights, even though most of us have only heard about this document for the first time.
After all, these are matters that are close to our hearts, even if we are almost past the age of 18 and technically not children anymore.
We perused the Convention, and decided to focus on Article 37 which says that no one should be allowed to punish children in a cruel or harmful way.
It is interesting, because what do they mean by cruel and harmful? It’s a very subjective thing to define, for there are no hard and fast rules. And furthermore, do the Malaysian law and its citizens (in general) uphold this article?
Sarah Nair, 17, simply shrugged. “I think corporal punishment would be going against this Article 37. But generally, I believe we uphold this article in Malaysia.”
Some people believe that corporal punishment, or caning,is necessary to discipline children. They tell you that back in ye ole’ days, children were so well behaved that truancy and smoking were unheard of. However, back in those days, children were also caned for simply speaking out of turn.
I think corporal punishment is problematic. People tend to lose control of themselves in anger, and more often than not, children suffer because they are helpless to fight back. Children however, are not angels either.
Instead of using corporal punishment, which I would say is ‘harmful and cruel’, parents and disciplinarians need to come up with more creative ways of disciplining their charges.
Sarah also added that it’s hard to figure out just where the line between disciplining and being cruel is.
Someone once told me the story of two girls who were both in the same class, and who scored well below average in their science papers.
The parents of the first girl adopted a ‘no rotan’ policy unless absolutely necessary while the other girl’s parents slapped and yelled when their children displeased them. Upon seeing the dismal marks, the girls' parents responded differently.
One girl's parents took her out to the garden, entrusting her with a caterpillar which she watched grow into a butterfly, while the other girl suffered her mother’s yelling and her father’s slaps with a clear warning to do better.
Years down the road, the girl who learned to love science because of her parents continued expose her to nature decided on majoring in life sciences while the other girl grew to hate the subject.
Childhood trauma, however minor, has a great impact on growing children and teenagers.
Parents, siblings and teachers need to educate and enlighten themselves and their children about their rights; they need to tell every little boy and girl that he or she has the right to an education, to food, shelter, freedom and even the right to know your rights!
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