Abusive Punishment in the Malaysian schools

As a mother and also the president of Sekolah Kebangsaan Suka Hati

Parents-Teacher Association committee, I want to talk about an issue regarding the
treatment given by some teachers to the students in the school. As we all know,
corporal punishment by teachers is still common practice in schools and is widely
accepted as an appropriate way to discipline students. Just to make it clear for
everyone, I will firstly give what does corporal punishment means. Referring to
Britannica Encyclopedia, corporal punishment is defined as the physical disciplining
of students in the schools and at home. Meaning to say, corporal punishment is a
physical punishment to disciplining students. In Malaysia, corporal punishment can
be applied only to the male students and shall only be limited to blows with light cane
on the palm or on the buttocks with maximum three canings as stated in the Surat
Pekeliling Ikhtisas 7/2003.
I believe by introducing corporal punishment among students will bring many
positive effects such as develop self-discipline among students since their young
age. For instance, the students will be afraid to do the same mistakes again. This is
the right way to use corporal punishment to their students. However, in some drastic
cases people take corporal punishment a little too far by beating the students with
random objects such as books and whiteboard eraser.
In research conducted by the UNICEF (Studentss Rights and Emergency
Relief Organization), in 2011 at 19 schools in Malaysia, students reported being
slapped in the face, pinched, hit on the back of the head, having their hair pulled and
verbally abused. These are some examples on how the teachers took corporal
punishment a little too far which showed abusive act towards the students.
To prove some more, there is a lot in the newspapers about teachers abusing
rather than punishing in a proper way. We read news about teachers punching
students, slapping a boy until his eardrums rupture, making two students wear
cowbells around their necks and many other news on abusive punishments towards
the students in schools.
Last month, on the 12
th
of February, I read a news from The Star online about
a 10-years old boy was caned 14 times for not completing his test in time at the one
of the school in Johor. To my surprise, the teacher asked the students to answer 15
questions in only five minutes. Personally, I do not think that the inability to answer a
test is a behaviour problem which needs to be punished. Due to the caning, the boy
suffered a swollen shoulder and had cuts on his back. When the father of the student
went to the school, the teacher refused to speak to him while the headmaster said he
was unable to take action against the teacher. In this case, the teacher should have
discussed with the parent so that the parents can know what their child has done
wrong.
Other than that, last February, there was also another example of abusive act
of a teacher on his four students. Four students of a secondary school in one of the
schools in Perak through a scary moment when a male teacher acting berserk and
beating them up by punching. Not only that, one of the students claimed that he was
kicked on the face by the same teacher for not bringing his exercise book. Because
of that, the boy had severe bleeding on his chin. This may lead the students to get
traumatize and afraid to go to the school.
The last example is about the case where 200 female students from one of
the schools in Sibu, Sarawak were punished by soaking in a dirty pond for an hour
because one of them threw her sanitary napkin in the toilet bowl but did not want to
admit throwing it. The water was dirty because even the water from the school
canteen flowed into the pond. As the result from the punishment, many students
suffered from fever and itchiness. The action of the students throwing sanitary
napkins into the toilet bowl was wrong, but I think the punishment given to them was
not appropriate as soaking students into a dirty pool is not a one of the rules in
boarding school discipline.
Therefore, I wish anyone from the panels present here today can tell us about
the reasons or causes on why this abusive punishment occurs in our Malaysian
school. By knowing the reasons of why this issue existed, we can think of ways to
solve this problem as well as to avoid misunderstanding and bridge the gap between
the teachers and parents so that both sides can work together in maintaining
conducive learning environment for our future generation.