A Change in the Way We Discipline
“Education is not about filling a pail, but lighting a fire.” Yet too often, that fire is dimmed by fear instead of being fueled by understanding. In my school, students are beaten for being late a punishment that feels more like a step backward than a lesson forward.
We are told that school prepares us for the workplace, but in what workplace are people beaten for lateness? A job may write you up, deduct your pay, or call you in for a conversation but it will not strike you. So why should an institution built on growth and learning do so? We are no longer living in times of slavery or oppression. We fought for independence not only as a country, but as a people to free ourselves from the mentality that violence equals discipline.
Beating may create fear, but fear does not teach responsibility. It silences voices. It builds resentment. And it tells young minds that pain is the price of correction. But we can do better. Instead of blows, we can use reflection giving late students a chance to understand the value of time through guided conversations or helping with school duties that build character instead of shame.
We cannot preach growth while planting fear. We cannot claim to be building leaders while treating them like subjects. Let’s remember: discipline should shape, not scar. If schools are to truly prepare us for life, then let the lessons come from respect, not from raised hands.
“Violence may control a body, but respect reaches the soul.” It’s time our schools start reaching souls.
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well said👏🏽 there must still be a means of punishment instilled… a punishment that is rather also unwanted…
I just can’t believe it, school going human being are been beaten for punctuality? You see how colonialism elongate itself into this society today? And that doesn’t apply to any Caucasian or syrians or indian child in the school system on Antigua whom we fearfully tip toe around, a matter a fact they build their own education institution to avoid our culture.
We are like a coconut brown outside and white inside, the power of a slave master devolved into black skin. You think them could a beat any child in the USA? As you can see them this even shoot up the school, so how could a teacher contemplate beating them, I am speaking for my grandchildren, they should not go through what I went through, we would have had scientist and astronauts here if we weren’t beaten back in the days, stop carrying on the white man ethno supremacists ideology, after all you call yourselves educators, please try and become internally educated rather than externally educated or trained just like a dog to fetch things, the white former slave masters send you to fetch neocolonialism.