Quoting the Tradewinds in support of beating students

Jan 28, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Like the proverbial lemmings rushing at 50 knots towards the edge of the cliff to their destruction, some Guyanese seem hell bent on following the lead of the United States and adapting whatever strategies they employ; regardless of the consequences. As I’ve stated before, there is a reason why, in the good ole United States of America, Arkansas, Texas, Wyoming, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, Idaho, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina have all refrained from banning corporal punishment. I resent corporal punishment (CP) being libeled as violence against children. It is a tried and true method of reinforcing in those who step out of the bounds of the rules and regulations of the day, that there are repercussions to one’s actions when one breaks the rule or law. What method was employed to replace CP by the states that claimed it was a progressive move to ban it? In such states teachers are more often than not afraid of students who are a cat’s spit from being incarcerated.
The fact is, the establishment has everything to gain from banning CP. In the states where it is banned, children are practically free to take liberties with adults; something that they would never have dreamt of in the days of CP. When their behavior becomes outrageous enough, they are diagnosed and given a label. I’ve personally heard many a student proudly declare the acronym with which he/she is diagnosed and that he/she is not responsible for his/her actions. Then comes the money-maker; medicating students. This is where pharmaceutical juggernauts like Pfizer reel in the dough. And the way the U.S. system works, such large companies pay lobbyists handsomely to grease the appropriate political wheels to get laws like banning CP passed. The same companies pay so called experts to trumpet the ills of CP and label it with negative tags like “violence against children” and “…causes children to become violent adults.” People like Vidyartha Kissoon then pick up the war cry and mimic whatever is sold by the U.S., all supposedly in the name of progress. In reality, it is a step backward if Guyana is foolish enough to adapt this step. In the last ten years we have reduced the use of corporal punishment in schools. Compare the behavior of our students prior to that period with that of our students today. Has it improved? Are we going to blame lack of resources or medicine for our inability to cope with the new scourge of the land? Are we prepared to establish a branch of the police force to monitor our schools? What about building new prisons like they do each month in the U.S. for these mal-adjusted kids? Do we have the finance to establish all of this? Maybe the pundits advocating banning CP are anticipating we’ll be able to finance such programs when our newly found oil begins to flow. There are better things we can do with whatever money we get from our oil in the near future, providing of course, oil doesn’t sink to a dollar a barrel.
I’ve received the cane in school and the belt at home in my day. I must confess I did not like it. But that is the point of CP. It is not supposed to be pleasant. It is a deterrent for whatever one did that he should not have done. Whatever it was that I did, you can bet it was never repeated again. To date, the so-called violence that CP is supposed to have generated in me has not been unleashed. I’m yet to chalk up my first assault and I haven’t killed anyone yet (not to my knowledge anyway). Corporal punishment is not perfect but it is the best method for its purpose. If something has been working all these years, don’t abandon it because someone labels it as antiquated. If we abandon CP all together I hope we are prepared for the horror show to follow. As long as these U.S. trained TACP (touters against corporal punishment) keep pressing the point, I shall continue to argue in favor of not throwing out the baby with the bath water. The argument that if you stop spanking children and talk nicely to them instead will make them well-behaved law abiding citizens is, to be blunt, asinine. As the Tradewinds sang, “…Can’t make an alligator climb a rope.”
Malcolm Alves

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