Schools, not prisons
It came through that today's education a highly competitive and lucrative business where schools compete to produce impressive results by creating an atmosphere of exam frenzy through the year and resorting to corporal punishment of sinister dimensions is driving students even to suicide. Narrations in the Enquiry by children and parents of inhuman incidents of violence and humiliation were heart-rending. What seems to embolden the school authorities to convert schools into prisons seems to be the fact that many parents are in tune with such punishment regimen; they are not against physical violence as a tool for disciplining, but only against excesses. And teachers fear that their job security depends on the performance of students. Corporal punishment as an acceptable part of schooling is deeply entrenched in the Indian social psyche. In a globalised market, education has become a mere skill and even a pretension of perceiving it as value-based knowledge does not seem to exist. It is obvious that the education department, the school managements and the police are notably failing in their duty to the children. A human rights perspective is to be introduced in teacher training; there was the case of a school principal `inviting' the local police officer to counsel the students that ended up in a horrendous bashing up of many students. As sexual exploitation of girls by teachers was also considered in the Enquiry, one of the proposals was that the current stringent requirements to prove rape should be relaxed in cases involving minors. The grim and tear-stained faces of parents and children at the Enquiry reminded one of the words of Nobel Peace Winner Gabriella Mistral of Chile, our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life... Many of the things we need can wait, the child cannot. To him we cannot answer, tomorrow. His name is today." The travesty of schooling by terror should end.
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