The case of 13-year-old Miraz being “punished” by teacher Lob Chandra Das is not isolated or unique. The story is bound to elicit shock and outrage from the more liberal readers who have always shunned corporal punishment, but for anyone with even a perfunctory familiarity with our school system, this will not come as a surprise.
As tempting as it is to believe that Mr Lob Chandra Das was an anomaly – a bit of a psycho in a profession that draws mostly good people – the truth is that terror is practically synonymous with school in the minds of millions of children left to the mercy of our school system.
A report published in the Dhaka Tribune on July 22 tells the story of Mirazul Alam. Apparently the boy had engaged in a “scuffle” with a girl in his class at Kalidaha High School in Feni, and was "punished" for his actions. According to the boy’s mother, Miraz went to Lob Chandra’s house for private tutoring.
The boy was too stunned to talk once he returned home. He refused to eat and had nightmares. This kind of a vicious beating in a closed room may well have given him psychological trauma that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
The school’s headmaster’s reply to queries was that the punishment wasn’t all that severe. Apparently the kid had already been mentally ill, and even though Miraz had been feeling terrorised by the mere mention of the teacher’s name, the headmaster said his trauma had nothing to do with the beating. Talk about blaming the victim.
We’re not talking about violent criminals, rapists or thugs here. These people do not live on the fringes of society engaging in drive-by muggings, nor are they high profile criminals with layers of political protection. Teachers like Lob Chandra tend to be fairly powerless in their private lives, with struggles to make ends meet in the household, but a fairly clean image in the eyes of neighbours.
They are teachers after all; what they do is for the good of the children. Parents of the children are usually all too happy to hand over authority to these teachers. “Do what you think is best,” the parents say. Many parents, severely lacking in education themselves, cannot think outside of the cliché of spare the rod, spoil the child, and so forth.
These teachers, handed a bit of authority by the ignorance of those around them, then take it all out on the most powerless and defenceless group of humans – children. Some folks are under the impression that these beatings aren’t really the sadistic beatings that Miraz’s story makes them sound like. That they are acts of disciplining that may have unintentionally gone a bit too far. Or hey, maybe the kid was too weak in the first place, they say.
Make no mistake, while there are some teachers who hit children now and then, with the genuine intention to teach them discipline, our school system is rife with brutal, violent, downright sadistic teachers who have no concern for the child’s well-being whatsoever. In a different life they would’ve turned to violent crime or they would resort to torturing stray cats.
But since our system allows it, they hide in plain sight. They hold on to their respected, albeit ill-paid jobs as teachers and preach about values. They prey on ignorant parents who are unwilling to even listen to their own child when he comes home all black and blue, afraid of his own shadow. You must have done something wrong, is their response.
Children aren’t just our future, they are our most innocent and vulnerable group of people. By the millions, we are handing them over to a broken and immoral schooling system. We are failing to protect them. We are failing to nurture them.
We are failing our children, and this is a great shame for us all.
