DONATE A BOOK CAMPAIGN-UGANDA
Dr. Winifred Kisitu
In most schools and homes in
the developing world, and Uganda in particular, discipline is synonymous with
punishment. Corporal punishment and other forms of humiliating and degrading
disciplinary approaches are widely used:
Teachers’
and parents’ approach to discipline is characterized by:
·
Strict rules and regulations;
·
High value of obedience;
·
Constant criticism of ‘wrong doings’;
·
Little or no recognition, praise or other signs
of approval when a child meets the ‘expected standard’;
·
Setting or expecting very high unattainable
standards;
·
Too much emphasis on perfection;
·
No freedom of expression; and
·
Making too many decisions for the children.
Children are treated as ‘little adults’, who
have to behave according to the ‘standards’ or ‘checklists’ set by adults.
Thus, when a child behaves contrary to the set ‘check list’, he or she is
labelled as ‘badly behaved’ and therefore deserving to be punished.
Children are ‘abused’
in the name of discipline. Within schools, 73% of punishment is carried out by
the teachers, 15% by fellow students, and 12% by the parents/Guardians who are
called to schools to settle disciplinary cases involving their children.
‘DISCIPLINE’ AT HOME
CASE 1
THE
STORY OF NANNONO (BY RACHEAL NINSIIMA, 8 MAY 2012)
"I was not given food for two days but I saw the other
two children eat. Then one day, my father sent me to the shop to buy pancakes
for my mothers. Because I was hungry, I instead bought cassava and ate it along
the way. When I told my father that I had eaten it, he tied my feet with a
rope, threw me on roof and told me not to dare come down. The next thing I saw
was a spear pointed towards me but thankfully, I dodged it. Then in anger, he
dragged me and sat down. Walking to the charcoal stove that had been used to
cook tea, he burnt a rubber sandal and held it over me, leaving it to drip on
my face."
A Good Samaritan of the village was able to report the case
and got Lubanga arrested last year.
SOURCE:
THE OBSERVER, TUESDAY, 08, MAY 2012
CASE 2
Another child was severely injured after her
father relentlessly pounded her for allegedly stealing Uganda shilling
5,000-equivalent to £1.10. Her face was swollen and deformed so much that she could not see
as her eyes were swollen.
SOURCE:
THE NEW VISION UGANDA –NOVEMBER 26, 2012
DISCIPLINE AT SCHOOL
CASE 1
BY FELLOW STUDENTS
STUDENT DIES AFTER TEACHER ORDERS
FELLOW STUDENT TO CANE HIM (BY SANDRA BIRUNGI, POSTED ON JUNE 12, 2013)
A teacher ordered pupils
to cane each other but one of the children collapsed and subsequently died
after being caned by fellow pupil.
The teacher hailing from
Iganga District, Ms. Grace Kiwanuka of Naigombwa Muslim Primary School was
offended when the children talked in class while she was teaching her daily
English class. She ordered them to cane each other. “The teacher was marking
books and told them to move in front of the class. She instructed them to give
each other three strokes of the cane but as soon as Yakubu was whipped, he
collapsed and died shortly afterwards,” said one of the pupils.
The deceased, 9-year-old
Yowana Yakubu, a Primary Three pupil died (on)Monday afternoon after being
beaten.
According to Mr.
Christopher Ocamju, the chief detective in Iganga District, police had failed
to locate the teacher and the pupil who allegedly administered the cane but
investigations are still ongoing.
Yakubu was buried
yesterday at Namalimba Village in Namalemba at 4pm at his 70-year-old
grandmother’s home. No school official turned up for the burial. The deceased
had been living with his grandmother, Hadijah Mudondo, after his mother’s
death.
CASE 2
BY TEACHERS
Muhusini
Bifemengo, a secondary student in Bugembe died in 2011. He succumbed to
illness, having been bedridden for two years.
On one fateful day in 2009, a
mathematics teacher caned him for failing exams. Witnesses then said the Senior
One student was caned 'till the cows came home'.
Muhusini returned home with
severe back pain and collapsed on his tiny bed. He would be bedridden for the
next two years till he succumbed to his permanent deformation.
His sister, Hikima Bifemengo of
Wakaliga-Nateete says: “My brother died miserably. He had severe back pain and
could neither walk nor sit. Doctors discovered that his spinal cord had been
damaged. As you know medics in our local hospitals are negligent and there is
never medicine, so he had to die."
"If the teacher had not
caned him like a beast maybe he would still be alive," she adds.
SOURCES-THE NEW
VISION SEPTEMBER, 5, 2013-11-06 BY FAHAMI WASSWA & LAWRENCE KITATTA)
EVIDENCE BACKED BY RESEARCH
In a survey involving
3,200 children in eight districts in northern Uganda, corporal punishment in
the home and at school was identified as one of children’s major safety
concerns: 79% of children said they felt unsafe or scared due to beatings at
school and 90% said they felt unsafe or scared due to beatings at home. When
asked to draw something that made them feel unsafe at home, at school or in the
community, more than half of the participants drew pictures of teachers beating
children, and children in all regions drew pictures of corporal punishment in
the home. (WarChild UK (2012) (Child Safety Report Card: 2012 Regional Report)
In a survey of 1,015
children at 25 public and private primary schools in Acholi, Lango, West Nile
and Central regions, 81% of respondents reported having been beaten at school.
Of those who had been beaten, 73% had been beaten by a teacher, 15% by other
students and 12% by their parents or guardians. Children were also punished by
being denied food for extended periods of time, locked up in rooms, assigned
difficult work and forced to kneel in front of other children at school.
Eighty-two per cent of children had seen their friends being caned (Source-
http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/pdfs/states-reports/Uganda.pdf)
THE GOVERNMENT OF UGANDA’S POSITION
ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
In 2006, due to the
negative consequences of violence against children, the Ministry of Education
and Sports took a clear stance against corporal punishment in Ugandan schools. The ban was imposed after several children were killed
and others hospitalized when they were beaten by their teachers.
A. THE 1995 CONSTITUTION
OF UGANDA
The Constitution
protects the dignity and the safety of every Ugandan, including children.
Article 24 talks about ‘Respect for human dignity and protection from inhuman treatment’;
emphasizing that, ‘No person shall be subjected to any form of torture or
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. Article 44 (a) talks
about the freedom of every Ugandan-‘freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment’.
B.
CHILDREN
ACT 2003 CAP 59
Provides legal
framework to protect and promote the rights of children. Stating that ‘Every
child has a right to live with his/her parents or guardians and every parent
has the responsibility for his/her child’.
C. AFRICAN CHARTER ON THE
RIGHTS AND WELFARE OF THE CHILD
Article
11 (5)
‘States Parties to the
present Charter shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that a child who
is subjected to schools or parental discipline shall be treated with humanity
and with respect for the inherent dignity of the child and in conformity with
the present Charter’
Article
16 (1)
‘States Parties to the
present Charter shall take specific legislative, administrative, social and
educational measures to protect the child from all forms of torture, inhuman or
degrading treatment and especially physical or mental injury or abuse, neglect
or maltreatment including sexual abuse, while in the care of the child’.
Article
20
‘Parents or other
persons responsible for the child shall have the primary responsibility of the
upbringing and development the child and shall have the duty’:
‘to ensure that domestic discipline is
administered with humanity and in a manner consistent with the inherent dignity
of the child’ (1a).
D. AFRICAN CHARTER OF
HUMAN AND PEOPLE’S RIGHTS
Article 3
(1) ‘Every individual shall be equal before the
law’;
(2) ‘Every
individual shall be entitled to equal protection of the law’.
Article 4
‘Human beings are
inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the
integrity of his person. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of this right’.
Article 5
Every individual shall
have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being and to
the recognition of his legal status. All forms of exploitation and degradation
of man particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading
punishment and treatment shall be prohibited.
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS WITH
UGANDA’S LEGAL COMMITMENT
A. THE CONVENTION ON THE
RIGHTS OF THE CHILD (CRC)
Article 19 (1)
‘ States
Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and
educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental
violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or
exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal
guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child’.
B.
INTERNATIONAL
COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Article 7
No one
shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent
to medical or scientific experimentation.
STORIES FROM GROWN UPS
STORY 1
A DIARY OF CANING, CANING, AND MORE
CANING (BY ANDREW SMART WASSAJA)
Memories
of childhood are often hard to summon. But the traumatic memories stick
forever. Today, they would appear to you as on the day the event happened.
I
started school in 1972 at age six. My primary education was spent in St.
Peter’s boys Primary School Nsambya and East Kololo Primary School. However, it
was in Nsambya that I have my most memories (read haunting) experiences. I still
recall tears rolling down my cheeks on my first day at school, as if to
forebode what awaited in my wretched school-days. It’s still a mystery to me
whether primary school teachers are simply trained to administer terror to
their pupils. Not even the well-behaved pupil would escape the wrath of the
cane-hungry teachers of that period.
I
still recall when a teacher would storm a classroom with ten surprise
mathematical brain-teasers which you were expected to provide answers within a
record five seconds. I am almost certain that he himself would have no ready
answers under the given circumstance.
And
naturally, everybody in the class failed them, after which we would all be
subjected to indiscriminate caning administered to any part of the body.
Monthly tests were also dreaded by pupils. But for the teachers it was the
opportune period to polish or to perfect the art of administering corporal
punishment. In such times, the whole class would be subjected to caning. Even
those who had scored 101% would be punished for being selfish with their
knowledge.
Almost
every teacher had their unique style of punishment. Some of the styles required
an offender to bend forward and touch his feet, while the teacher unleashed the
stick on his backside. If you touched the battered area, she would shout
imperiously, ‘you’ve touched, and I’m starting afresh from (count) zero’.
Other
teachers were fond of spanking the palms, head, legs and even the feet. Yet
others would first wet your butt for maximum effect. We were forced to pad our
backside with tyre-tube parts (meaning pants) in order to cushion the flesh
against the harsh canes. Sometimes we would wear a second pair of shorts.
Are
you still wondering that the scars of this torture are almost as fresh as
yesterday?
SOURCE-THE MONITOR, KAMPALA, 10 MAY
1998-BY ANDREW SMART WASSAJA)
STORY 2
WINIFRED’S
OWN EXPERIENCE
I was in primary six
when one Monday our religious teacher came to teach. I had been off the
previous week-Thursday and Friday (the school was informed) and the teacher had
given pupils homework. So when he walked in that morning, he asked all the
pupils to put their books on top of the desks displaying their homework. At
this time, he was already holding a stick. He started inspecting, and all those
who did not display their work were beaten, and anywhere. He them started
marking the work while beating up those who did not get the ‘pass mark’.
Unfortunately such
practices still exist in our schools today. The government of Uganda outlawed
corporal punishment in schools, but what is lacking are the guidelines-the
different and practical ways that teachers can use to discipline children. This
books
My heart’s desire is
that every person working in nursery and lower primary schools gets a copy of
the book. But unfortunately some, if not most of the practitioners cannot
afford to buy it. This has prompted me to launch the ‘donate a book campaign’
in which every £5.00 donated puts a book in one practitioner’s hands.
It is undisputable that
every child deserves a better start in life characterised by a secure, safe and
happy environment. Together we can work towards this.
THANK YOU.
DONATE
A BOOK CAMPAIGN-UGANDA
Dr. Winifred Kisitu
