Dear Editor,

In recent times, the call has been for corporal punishment to be banned from school and homes. However, before we agree or disagree with the suggestions, let us take the issue in context, especially as it relates to corporal punishment in schools.

What alternative methods do you use when you have a class of 45 students, a school population of 2,100 pupils with a dean of discipline and three guidance counsellors. That is the situation that faces a prominent high school in Clarendon. Teachers are asked to perform miracles. The intervention programmes in place by the Ministry of Education are way inadequate to meet the needs and demands of school population.

Child abuse is wrong, and that should not be tolerated by anyone. Corporal punishment is not abuse. It has its purpose once it is administered properly.

I also endorse alternative ways of discipling children, but the question is which one works best. How do you actually discipline children at school when alternative methods that are left have no success?

The reality is that there is a breakdown of the family in society. Children are left to do what they want and parents are not held accountable for children. So children are lawless at home and take that behaviour wherever they go, and teachers are expected to solve the problems of parental and societal neglect.

The problem is not so much the method of punishment, but more so that discipline is not maintained at home. What are teachers to do? What double standards!

Fabian Thomas

Fabesthomas1st@yahoo.com