I’VE ALWAYS wondered why teachers had to use physical force to induce student learning. And I have always believed, and still do, that you do not have to ‘beat’ students to learn. I suspect there are people who support school corporal punishment, using their own school experiences of corporal punishment as evidence; and indeed, there also are others, who are not advocates of school corporal punishment, applying their school experiences of corporal punishment as evidence.
It is not my intention in these Perspectives on ‘No to corporal punishment’ to dismiss any position on corporal punishment, but merely to present a few findings from some studies, and then later extract some conclusions.

Dubanoski,  Inaba, and Gerkewicz’s paper, ‘Corporal punishment in schools: Myths, problems and alternatives’ in Child Abuse & Neglect, in the background to their research posited that support for school corporal punishment is associated with the view that it is effective; that there is lack of knowledge of problems emanating from this physical punishment; and that there is unfamiliarity with effective disciplinary alternatives.

They found the following:
(1) That there were many myths associated with physical punishment; for instance, one of those myths was that physical punishment nurtures character;

(2) that there were more problems associated with physical punishment than they seem to resolve; for instance, students experiencing physical punishment tend to avoid the punishment-oriented teacher, and that teacher rarely becomes a progressive factor in those students’ development; and

(3) that there were alternatives to school corporal punishment as, applying the social learning approach and communication skills which improve classroom behaviour and advance learning.

In the book, ‘Schooling as violence: How schools harm pupils and societies’, Harber (2004) noted that global debates on education have focused on access to education, positive outcomes of education, and schools as reproducers of inequality; and these are useful debates.
But Harber found that what the debates excluded was the view that schooling is quite violent to the pupils and the larger society. He found that the media generally relate quite considerably to student-to-teacher violence, and student-to-student violence, and these things do happen; but little attention is given to the role of the school as a contributor to violence. Yet in Guyana and elsewhere, we see increased school violence.
And we tend to look at other socialization agencies as the family, media, etc., as influencing factors to school violence; and we should; yet we pay little attention to the framework of the school system, vis-à-vis corporal punishment and use of authoritarian teaching techniques, as a reproducer of violence in schools, as well as violence in the larger society.
As the debate on school corporal punishment rages, should we not also think about a form of teaching effectiveness without the use of physical force?