Professional Documents
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Tafa-Corporal Punishment!
Tafa-Corporal Punishment!
Elmon M. Tafa
To cite this article: Elmon M. Tafa (2002) Corporal Punishment: The brutal face of Botswana's
authoritarian schools, Educational Review, 54:1, 17-26, DOI: 10.1080/00131910120110848
Introduction
This article is based on a larger on-going multi-case study of the teaching methods
of seven new Botswana junior secondary school teachers. The study explores their
beliefs about corporal punishment in terms of socialisation at home, in their own
schools, pre-service training and their teaching schools. Corporal punishment is
legalised in Botswana but, despite widespread infringement of the law in its use,
there is no evidence of enforcement. Although justi ed as ‘African culture’ by
teachers, caning is a historically embedded copy strategy. Both parents and students
have been socialised into accepting this form of punishment.
Caning in Botswana has only been eetingly addressed by other researchers. From
their ‘observation protocol’ Marope and Amey (1995s: p. 21) in a survey study did
not nd evidence of corporal punishment. However, from ‘the students’ guided
discussions’ students complained about,
… being beaten anywhere the teacher pleases … for no … reason, with …
sticks, ‘sjamboks’, board dusters, … sprayed with doom, … sent to clean
teachers’ houses, … to banks, stores and to wash teachers’ cars during
lessons.
Their two contradictory ndings re ect the limitation of quantitative research in
trying to capture the realities of school life. Prophet (1995) also refers to, ‘the regular
use of corporal punishment in class’ in passing but does not develop the point.
Caning has its origins in the country’s colonically imposed authoritarian system of
schooling (Tabulawa, 1995; Prophet, 1995; Marope & Amey, 1995). Vanqa (1998s
p. 162) refers to a lawsuit against a teacher who ‘savagely’ in icted ‘ fteen cuts’ on
a pupil during colonialism and this: ‘… common belief that those who exceeded the
ISSN 0013–1911 print; 1465–3397 online/02/010017-1 0 Ó 2002 Educational Review
DOI:10.1080/00131910120110848
18 E. M. Tafa
limits of corporal punishment’ believed that ‘… if one spared the rod one would
spoil the child’.
Research Methodology
The principal research question of the study was; ‘How are the teaching perceptions
and practices of the new teachers in Botswana junior secondary schools affected by
their rst four months of school and classroom life?’ It was important to try and
understand the meanings of the teachers’ behaviours from their own point of view
and in their natural setting over a period of time for a fuller appreciation of the
interface between their teaching philosophies and school socialisation (Yin, 1994;
Maxwell, 1996; Cresswell, 1998). Data were collected through observations, inter-
views and document analysis using ve case study schools—one urban [Sepelete
CJSS (Community Junior Secondary School)] and the rest rural. Fictional names of
the teachers and schools are used in this paper (Opelang and Magwa at Labuda,
Makhekhe at Jakalas, Tsogang at Sepelete, Jabu and Polokano at Shakani and Thepe
at Chandapiwa CJSS). Over 130 interviews and recorded discussions took place,
over 60 lessons were observed over a period of 4 months and a wide range of
documents were analysed.
Neophytes wrote autobiographical narratives on the teaching/training methods and
the discipline they experienced at home, in their schools and colleges of education.
They also drew their ideal classroom arrangement based on their teaching metaphors
(Knowels, 1993).
had counted a total of nine canes in the school (four of them in the deputy’s of ce).
This number could be an underestimate as some teachers keep their ‘weapons’ in the
storerooms or sent students to forage for canes in the nearest mophane forest during
lessons.
‘Every so often there is a blitz on discipline’ (Connell, 1985, p. 112) for late
coming, noise making, ghting, missing Saturday study and other adolescent acts of
misdemeanour. Typically, after morning assembly at Jakalas CJSS a teacher comes
to the staffroom followed by six boys. The boys wait outside the staffroom, while the
teacher proceeds to the headmaster’s and the deputy’s of ces and comes out with
two canes. The boys are ushered into the patio adjoining the staffroom and given
three strokes each on the buttocks. Other than Makhekhe’s rhetorical question, ‘who
is shooting guns this side’—a reference to the echo produced by birching. The rest
of the staff, whom the teacher immediately rejoins, continue working normally.
In what had become a regular pattern at Chandapiwa, at the end of morning
assembly a teacher brandishing a cane orders students who missed Saturday study to
see him. He threatens; ‘I am not going to listen to any excuses, I am going to beat
you’. That the causes of the offence will not be entertained was a worrisome norm.
In effect it means that, contrary even to the Roman Dutch law on which the country
is governed, pupils are presumed to be guilty until they exculpate themselves, but
given the frosty student–teacher relationships and the pressure of the immediacy of
the decisions that are made, even the opportunity for this burden of proof is often
denied. The same notion is captured in this common draconian school rule; ‘If you
think you are being treated unfairly, … take punishment rst (usually caning) and
complain later’.
In the Chandapiwa incident, as staff walked back to the staffroom after assembly
followed by the offending students, the teacher stretched his hands and joked; ‘ke a
ba jimela’, meaning, ‘I am exercising in preparation for them’. The eight students
were summarily given three strokes each on their palms. On a different day the
culprits are beaten by the headmaster who afterwards says to me, ‘Mr Tafa, “nna”
(I) think I will quit my job, I can’t afford to beat students every day. I doubt if I will
go to heaven’.
In the Jakalas staffroom a teacher makes an emotional outburst, ‘I feel like beating
students today’. Except for Makhekhe’ response, ‘why? You will scare us’, staff are
unmoved. Minutes later, another teacher has interrupted his lesson to come and
collect a cane, and vows as he takes it; ‘ke batla go setla banayana ba’, (‘I want to
thump these kids’). Meanwhile, after beating a student another teacher threatens; ‘tell
Otsetswe that if I have to follow him at the classroom I am going to kill him’. The
deputy, who was within earshot, remarks, ‘you have declared war on the students’—
as he proceeds to his class. Later during staffroom gossip one teacher asserts; ‘I have
instructed my class that they must cover their books or else they will be beaten’
while another says he threatened to re-possess uncovered books.
At Labuda CJSS socialisation into the culture of beating started on day one by
diktat from on high. New teachers reported being told by the headmaster that ‘pupils
… are very naughty and because they are Batswana they must be caned’ and that
there was no need to record the punishment. The school did not keep a Punishment
Record Book.
On at least nine classroom bulletin boards at Labuda CJSS was a newspaper
clipping from the Government Daily News (November 1999) depicting school boys
lying on the oor face-down being publicly walloped by a policeman on their bare
Corporal Punishment 21
backs at a kgotla (court) for misbehaving. The message to the neophytes conveyed
by this obnoxious teaching aid on otherwise bare bulletin boards, was loud and clear.
Teachers were pressurised to maintain a united front on discipline by ‘not being
afraid of administering corporal punishment’ (Headmaster, Jakalas CJSS). The cliché
was ‘uniformity’ and ‘consistency’, with this warning, ‘… some teachers want to be
taken to be good with students and he warned such teachers that they will never
survive the type of student we have’ (Staff minutes, Chandapiwa Headmaster’s
remarks, 15 April 1999).
Asked how the new teachers coped while on duty the Co-ordinator of English at
Jakalas stated; ‘They used corporal punishment, which is common when children are
making noise … and which they (students) enjoy most’.
punishment’ (Reynolds quoted in Meighan, 1981, p. 115). And yet Jakalas CJSS
wanted to ban the chewing of gum and whistling on school premises—prompting
one the teachers to dub it, ‘turning the school into a prison’.
Hargreaves notes that,
… the differential effects of the hidden curriculum … for pupils of
working class backgrounds the result is the destruction of their dignity …
they must bear the scars of damaged dignity that goes with the … stigma
of being … written-off. (quoted in Meighan, 1981, pp. 58–60)
In Botswana the ‘damage to the dignity’ of the written-off slow learners also takes
the form of degrading physical pain. Routinised caning may be a function of the
‘cultural capital’ of working class and peasant children which is often at variance
with the dominant school culture, for example, the enforcement of school uniforms.
There is no caning in elite schools in Botswana (Tabulwa, 1995).
African respect for elders, the utilitarian view of education and the positivist idea
of teachers as infallible also facilitate an outward acceptance of their ‘right’ to cane
pupils. Teachers make a great play of the notion of their ‘in loco-parentis’ relation-
ship with pupils, interpreted to mean the ‘right’ to chastise them physically.
Pupils’ public support of caning is also rooted in the historical evolution of this
form of punishment and the way dominant social structures repress and invalidate the
consciousness of individuals. It is important to note in this regard that, ‘… the ways
in which people characterise their actions may be at variance with what they are
really doing … may be … rationalisations to obscure … reality’ (Carr & Kemmis,
1986). In fact, Morrell (1999) in a survey of school pupils in South Africa argues
that, while publicly endorsing caning, privately ‘… the emotional response to
beatings … were more striking … students feel anger, hurt, sadness and being
wronged’. It is likely that in Botswana students’ public statements of support for
corporal punishment are similarly at odds with their private reactions and feelings.
Ironically, in many ways teachers were authors of their own misfortunes. Many
so-called discipline problems stemmed from their rigid and punitive approach, harsh
and inconsistently applied school rules, lack of variation of learning styles, bare and
uninspiring classrooms, lack of respect for the self-esteem and self-worth of students
as individuals as well as poor school organisation and sense of purpose. Indeed
schools are run as if students are the enemy to be kept under surveillance and whose
views are never solicited.
Finally, birching must also be understood in the context of the country’s inherently
authoritarian and behaviourist teacher training model (Mannathoko, 1995). Indeed
while the trajectory of the neophytes’ attitudes to caning has its roots in the
sedimentation process of ‘apprentice-of-observation’ over their many years of
schooling (Lortie, 1977), lack of college ‘cognitive dissonance’ saw them graduating
with their authoritarian beliefs intact. State legitimated caning and its widespread use
in schools only compounded the problem.
Upon joining the teaching profession where there was no mentoring by experi-
enced staff, even behaviourism suffered rapid atrophication—lesson plans and
teaching aids were rapidly discarded. Although reinforcement techniques and the
step-by-step cumulative approach are retained an extraneous element is soon intro-
duced—caning is used instead of the ‘extinction’ of undesirable behaviour as per
Skinner’s behaviourist theory (Bigge, 1982s pp. 119–123). Teaching styles assume
a nineteenth century ‘mental-disciplinary’ approach of drilling students in the
Corporal Punishment 25
‘immutable’ ‘facts’ punctuated by threats and, use of caning for failing. In short,
while behaviourism withers away, an authoritarian and positivist outlook remains.
Conclusion
The use of state legitimated corporal punishment against children for even the most
negligible adolescent misdemeanours is degrading and testi es to the limits of the
country’s brand of liberal democracy which has been dubbed ‘authoritarian liberal-
ism’ akin to the democracies of the ‘Asian Tigers’ such as Malaysia (Good, 1996).
Democracy and institutionalised violence as a means of con ict resolution are
strange bedfellows. Ramsburg (1997), argues that ogging sends wrong signals to
children that beating ‘… is an acceptable way to solve problems’ and ‘that it is …
right for a big person to strike a small one’. Adding that it ‘has the potentially
harmful long-term effects such as increasing the chances of … violent or criminal
behaviour, impaired learning and depression’.
Botswana rati ed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as
recently as 1998, and pays little more than lip service to the convention. Our saving
grace may be the trend in the region which seems to be towards democratisation of
schools and concurrent of cial rejection of caning. Namibia and South Africa
outlawed caning because it is incompatible with the right of every citizen to not be
subjected to degrading punishment and with their learner-centred education (Harber,
2001, p. 22; Angula & Lewis, 1997). Zambia has followed suit. As recent experience
in these countries suggests, corporal punishment is not an integral part of ‘African
culture’ but a contested issue among Africans. It is time the debate over caning was
started in Botswana.
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