Just Beat it

Today I went to the school early in the morning to help with the nightmare of sending children who hadn’t paid their school fees home. Two things broke my heart today. First, obviously, was dealing with teary eyed students as I passed them notes to take home to their parents/guardians, explaining why they were not allowed at school. Although it was very difficult, and even I had a few tears, in the end it worked and all students who were sent home returned later in the day with their fees.

The second heartbreak began with the sound of a student quickly sucking in air repeatedly outside the staff room. Initially, I was not sure of the source of the sound, but when I paired it with the ‘whipping’ that preceded the wincing, I was entirely horrified. A few minutes later I had a visual example of the apparently common corporal punishment in Kenyan schools. The same teacher was trying to get one of her Class 1 pupils to write the numbers from one to ten in order. Unfortunately for him, the number eight evaded him. I then witnessed his teacher use a stick to slap the poor five year old on the palm of his hand several times. This went on again and again until he remembered that darned number. Surely there are better ways to teach children other that ‘beating it in to them’?

The big question for me is how to approach the situation with the teachers, if at all. Last year one of the project managers led a workshop at this same school about why corporal punishment in the classroom is wrong. Obviously, though I do not find it surprising to find that it did not work. Really, how much influence can wzungus have giving a lecture on children’s rights to teachers. I actually expected to encounter the issue of corporal punishment in discipline related conflicts, and anticipated sharing alternative classroom management strategies. I am staggered to find that it is also a part of the learning process. I suppose I could shift my tactics to differentiated instruction techniques and learning tools... but it will be a challenge to find the right medium and circumstances for the teacher interaction, and what is to say that they would consider a mzungu’s input? Perhaps D.I. should be the topic for the teacher training workshop I wanted to initiate this summer... I’ll have to do some more research to see if there is a local organization that can help with the training, as I believe strongly that it will have a more lasting effect coming from a Kenyan.

Ouch.