Spare the rod and spoil the child.
By Kim See-bong
Which is better ― to correct disobedient kids using some physical punishment or to let them go scot-free at school? This is one of the biggest problems our current education is facing; to teach with or without a pointer.
The progressive group insists on the one hand that such punishment should disappear from schools, protesting that it is against human rights. But I doubt the appropriateness of using the word human rights here. Can human rights apply to this case of educating a person to be cognizant of what true human rights are?
Referring to a priority in human rights, which comes first, the right to learn or the right not to undergo physical punishment at all? Therefore, on the other hand, the conservatives always contend that physical punishment is a necessary evil for the successful management of education at school where hundreds of students with like so many different personal traits are assembled.
When words or any other methods do not work to control some of the spoiled students that will not listen to their teachers, what can the teacher do otherwise? Do they have to give up on them? If the kids are abandoned by their teachers at school, they are sure to turn into bad eggs in society.
In a small and large society, is it possible at all to run it without inflicting occasional punishment to its members? What's the reason for our living surrounded by all kinds of restrictions like regulations, rules and laws? Why should we sometimes be subject to incarceration in the worst case?
Even Christ and Buddha who are the saints symbolic of the ultimate goodness taught their followers citing the stories of heaven and hell. Supposedly they believed that humans are to be threatened by punishment and the fear of punishment like falling into an inferno works effectively.
By the same token, is there any way to educate a person without discipline? Punishment or a threat to punish is necessary for developing discipline and for this purpose castigation including some corporal punishment could follow, but it shouldn't be part of violence in any sense, of course. Nevertheless, the adoptability of even this unavoidable corporal infliction of pain has become an issue splitting our nation into two pros and cons.
Here arises the issue of a teacher's disposition. Are the teachers capable of restraining themselves from blowing up at the provocation of their students? They were brought up in the nearly same ambience as their students, doing everything as they please, being pampered by their parents and not knowing how to tolerate others. They want only to be served but serving others, they feel hurt.
As a result, though not the case with all teachers, before they realize what their job is and what it takes to become good at it, they become teachers by the courses they finish and the grade they achieve in a test. Consequently, the devastated wilderness of current education filled with wild plants is too much for them to handle. Moreover when most of them were tempted not by their sense of calling but by the perks offered by the job of a teacher. The noble idea of becoming a traditionally respectful teacher whose shadow can't be trodden upon has long disappeared.
Not just a few teachers have become blind to the cause of a teaching job and are leading the innocent through information-collecting courses as they did. Yet, they are persistent in arguing for what they want, but regrettably they are unable to see hundreds of students following. Sometimes, their belligerence hurts the followers.
In “Brave New World” by Huxley, he says "Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean." How could our education be clean in a mucky climate? Innovation should start at home and with teachers and then with each member of our society with a new spirit from square one.
After all, teachers are the only solution as well as the problems with our education. To cite Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, ``There was only one catch and that was Catch-22 which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers … was the process of a rational mind."
Until all the teachers are prepared with a rational mind, ``Spare the rod and spoil the child" will persist as part of the process in its importance in educating our children.
The writer is principal of Polyglot Day School in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at glsacademy@dreamwiz.com.