The Insanity in Cracking the Whip on Ghanaian Students

3 mins (read)

The year 2000 still holds horror for me, and perhaps for most of my friends who were equally sad for a horror visited on us while in the Junior High School. Our Maths teacher – a man full of terror, venom and feared in the school due to his heightened use of the cane, stormed our class, and asked us to stand up. Our charge – we’d invaded the silence in the school, and as punishment, we’d all be given six lashes.

The Terror in Caning:

I could still see the watery eyes of Marjorie – my sitting partner, who lifted her multicolored handkerchief to hold her tears from dropping, but they did anyways. My right hand was not spared the outpour of her tears as I could almost taste it. It was salty. The muscles on her forehead betrayed her fears, as she was terrified. One after the other we walked to the Math teacher, who had this victorious look on his face, and received what was due us amidst fear and horror. The sound of his cane was horrifying. At the end of the ordeal, most of us suffered some degrees of injuries due to the manner the teacher went about the whole thing. He caned us as though, a giant trudging on an ant. He was merciless. I suffered a cut on my right hand that my colleagues christened it – public watch. Often when someone needed to know the time of the day, I was the first point of call. ‘Austin what says the public watch?’ they would ask. Then we’d all laugh so loud to shame the horror visited on us by our fellow man.

16 Years on, the Craze is still strong:

Sixteen (16) years forward, our teachers in both public and private schools still hold on to this craze as though their lives depend on beating these innocent students. On Wednesday, 3 February, 2016, I walked into a female teacher of Epinal Schools, CP – Kasoa, busily beating a male student for reporting late to school. As though not enough, there were other teachers encouraging this lady to be ruthless. ‘Give it to him’, ‘harder’, and ‘stand well’, were some of the cheers I heard them shout.

Stupidity of Thinking Small:

This brought to mind the way we feel when, with our supposedly huge body, we pounce on a cockroach. We trash it under our feet thinking our confidence would be magnified by killing it. That doesn’t happen. We have, for years, been delusional in our thought. Always engaging, in what I called, vain thinking. We have deceived ourselves, and still do. These teachers of Epinal Schools, have the same aura about them. They are deceiving their conscience by engaging in an act that abuses the rights of others.

Who deserves to be caned?

There’s no crime ever committed by these students to deserve such inhuman treatment. What we may be oblivious to is how we’re contributing to the dwindling confidence and creativity of these students. We’re creating more people after our kind to treat others the same way we did to them.

We’re also, consciously or unconsciously, driving more of these students outside the school to be dropouts. In such a time when countries are encouraging their students to take education serious with creative state interventions meant to empower them, we’re discouraging our students with such disincentive actions as caning. What’s is worse is that major stakeholders such as the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ghana Education Service (GES) are quiet on this issue.

Nobody deserves to be canned. Today, we’re advised to desist from abusing the rights of animals. How much more our kind? Our nation needs to wean itself from this madness. We need to get this debate off the ground started. If we want to reap the full measure of benefits due to the Ghanaian education system, we need to get this issue resolved. Ghanaian students do not need to be treated as though they do not matter in the country.

They don’t deserve to be visited with terror and horror. They are partners of the education system, and require, as of rights, to be treated with dignity and respect. In the manner a business man would treat his partners, these students also deserve much more of that. We can do more than getting the debate started. We need to uproot and ban canning from the system.

Restoring the dignity of Mankind:

We need to restore the dignity of these students. Teachers in the country must acknowledge that their students deserve the same measure of respect they require. If they are cracking the whip, then the Ministry of Education (MoE), Ghana Education Service (GES), and their affiliated bodies need to also crack the whip on these schools. They need to make caning, and its related activities unappealing for teachers and school owners. The responsibilities of MoE, and GES should go beyond policy making. They need to get involved in the day to day administration of these schools to streamline their activities.

Any school caught encouraging caning should have its certificate revoked. Again, teachers found engaging in this inhuman act should be prosecuted to discourage others from doing same. We need to be more to these students; teachers, friends, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and mentors. They need to see something in us that goes beyond teaching. Let us draw them closer to us, via our actions, and conversations, and allay their fears of tomorrow. The foundation to our collective future resides in some of these little acts of hope.

We all never negotiated for the wrong things in life. Let us endeavor to become more to others, to receive more. We can do better.

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For more on Kwabena Brako-Powers please visit his blog on: www.brakopowers.blogspot.com or www.brakopowers.com. Please do share your comments with me. I am interested in learning from you as you learn from.