Teacher breaks student’s leg

* Corporal punishment in schools is a norm

Staff Report

KARACHI: Despite repeated claims by the relevant authorities that they have put an official ban on corporal punishment in schools, the menace still haunts parents.

The parents of a fourth-grade student at a private school of Korangi have complained to the education department high-ups that a physical trainer at the school severely beat their child and broke one of his legs.

Ishaq Ahmed, a resident of Korangi, on Wednesday filed a complaint to the executive district officer of the education department, in which he said a physical trainer, Abdul Ghani, at Sarfaraz Pilot Higher Secondary School in Korangi, had severely beaten his nine-year-old son, Ishtiaq Ahmed.

“He beat my son so severely that one of his legs got fractured,” he said.

Mr Ahmed appealed to the provincial secretary of education to take the teacher and the school to task.

The administrator of the school said he had expelled the trainer from the school.

He also offered to pay compensation and bear the expenses of the child’s treatment. The education secretary, Hashim Leghari, said an inquiry had been ordered and a team would visit the school on Thursday. Corporal punishment in private schools is on the rise and is being reported in the media.

Last month the media reported the severe beating of an 11-year old, Umair Ashraf, by a male teacher in the Progressive Public School in Dhoraji. Umair’s father, Mohammad Ashraf, reported the incident to the Bahadurabad police station. Mr Ashraf said the teacher had beaten the boy so severely that his head was bleeding.

It was not an isolated incident. Two similar incidents had earlier been reported.

An 11-year-old girl, Iraj Tariq, was severely beaten by her teacher in the American Foundation School in Gulistan-e-Jauhar. A nine-year old boy was badly beaten by a female teacher in Alizam Grammar School in Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

A most terrifying incident was reported in March when six-year-old Ashar was severely beaten by the elderly headmaster of a private school in Malir. The boy was brutally beaten with a wire, and then was made to parade around the school without his shirt on.

The father of the boy said his son’s fault was that he had missed the school transport one day. The boy was called into the headmaster’s office where a clerk held the boy’s arms while the headmaster lashed his back and hips with a wire. He then took off the boy’s shirt and paraded him before his schoolmates.

Psychologists say that, apart from various other reasons, one cause behind

such incidents is the miserably low salary-structure in private schools.

Most private schools are established in the low-income-bracket areas where

owners earn huge sums but pay meagre salaries to teachers. The majority of schoolteachers are those who could not get better jobs and are exploited by the owners. “Many of them are under great psychological stress and they take their frustration out on the unfortunate students,” an expert said. But others differ saying those who inflict pain on their students are not fit for the profession.

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