Punishment is not the best motivator

Some parents and teachers painted a catastrophic future for families and schools when the Children’s Act, 2001 outlawed corporal punishment.

The ultraconservative parents and teachers argued that corporal punishment was the most effective tool of “guiding children and students to desired behaviour”. They saw no other strategy of motivating students to adopt certain habits - cognitive and psychomotor - other than through corporal punishment.

The Children’s Act, 2001 was not conceived within the fertile imaginations of our legislators without reference to a global movement. Parliament enacted it to give effect to the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

If there was any lingering doubt about Government re-introducing Corporal Punishment in basic Educational institutions, the Constitution, 2010 removed that doubt by outlawing any forms of inhuman treatment of the child.

Under Article 53(d) of the Constitution, every child has a right to be protected from abuse, neglect, harmful cultural practices, all forms of violence, inhuman treatment and punishment, and hazardous or exploitative labour.

The legal position on corporal punishment is that it is outlawed. Anybody inflicting pain on students has no defence whatsoever. A teacher cannot, for instance, argue that he was acting on the instruction of the Principal to inflict pain on the offending student.

In law, such instructions are immaterial. While it evidently ties the hand of the teachers, it does not necessarily imply that teachers have no other recourse, or strategy they can legitimately use to create and sustain the kind of dispositions that enable them achieve the objectives and goals of education.

Motivating people with visionary and shared goals is more favourable than motivating through tactics, incentives or manipulation through simple carrot-and-stick approaches because motivating with vision is natural whereas the former is artificial and ephemeral and not sustainable in the long run.

In point of fact, recourse to artificial and ephemeral of effecting behaviour can be counterproductive. It breeds anger, bitterness and rejection. It is dehumanising.

If, for instance, a school has a policy of punishing students who have not performed beyond a certain benchmark, those who don’t perfume as expected will react differently - according to their personality, character and unconscious drives.

The best example of the tragic response to inflicting pain in order to produce desired behaviour from students is illustrated by Russian Novelist, Anton Chekhov, in a short story entitled ‘Who Was To Blame?’

His uncle wanted a kitten given to him to be a champion killer of mice, so while it was still young, he showed it a live mouse in a cage. Since the kitten’s hunting instinct had not yet developed, it examined the mouse curiously but without any hostility.

The uncle wanted to teach the mouse that such fraternising with the enemy was wrong, so he slapped the kitten, scolded it, and sent it away in disgrace.

The next day the same mouse was shown to the kitten again. This time the kitten regarded it rather fearfully, but without any aggressive intent. Again the uncle slapped it, scolded it, and sent it away.

This treatment went on day after day. After some time, as soon as the kitten saw or smelled that mouse, it screamed and tried to climb up the walls. At some point, the uncle lost patience and gave the kitten away, saying it was stupid and would not learn.

Of course the kitten had learned perfectly, and had learned exactly what it had been taught, but unfortunately not what the uncle intended to teach. “I can sympathise with that kitten,” says Chekhov, “because that same uncle tried to teach me Latin.”

Behind legislations against corporal punishment is modern thinking about human psychology. Degrading treatment of human beings — whether physical or psychological — is dehumanising.

The long-term effect of this degradation is dire. If the environment in which you gave super performance is not replicated in later life situations like workplace, that performance declines.

The adults who lack initiative, who are not assertive, may have had the animal spirit damaged through child abuse of one kind or another - mainly within their families or basic educational institutions.

Such people cannot work or show their best under a liberal or democratic work environment. You are likely to see truancy, chronic absenteeism, job dissatisfaction and blaming others for their own professional and personal failures in the work or professional dispositions of such people.

Modern society and the institutions that manage it have been forced to adopt humanistic values and principles. Respect for the dignity of man is uppermost. Respect for diversity of opinion is another.

Heads of educational institutions need to open up their eyes and create friendly environments.