Discipline

In African schools, as you may already be aware, there is corporal punishment.  It's the cornerstone  of school discipline on the whole continent, even though in Tanzania it's officially banned.  Karibu Tanzania:  it's banned, but the teachers still must follow set rules to administer it.*  At government schools there is a job called Discipline Master, and that is the teacher who regularly administers the punishment.  (Although all teachers can do it.)  The DM walks around the school assessing infractions and calls out students, usually after Assembly in the morning.  In front of the student body, students are singled out and hit for being late, for sleeping in class, for cutting up, for not doing their homework, for cheating on tests.  They are beaten for having unpaid school fees (this seems most unfair,) for having a dirty or incomplete uniform, for leaving their notebooks out in the rain, for loitering at the toilet too long.  As many things as a school child can think of, or not think of, to do wrong, all are punishable by being hit.

Punishment is administered with a cane made of stiff bamboo, or other stiff rod.The regulations say boys and girls are to be hit on the hand.  Boys can also be hit on the bottom, but only through their trousers.  Every teacher I have met has a story to tell about a demonic, cunning, or just plain mean Discipline Master who enjoys beating the shit out of students. The corollary is, sadly, the story of the student who somehow becomes the victim of a DM and is regularly beaten for trumped up infractions.  But even the most conscientious DM is committed to the idea that hitting students is a good and proper way to ensure their compliance and proper behavior.

At SEGA, a school founded and supported by Americans, corporal punishment is forbidden.  This has led to some interesting outcomes and discussions.  The veteran teachers say that discipline at SEGA is lax because the students know they can do anything and not be hit.  They don't buy into the idea of corporal punishment as ineffective - these teachers sincerely feel that at SEGA they are  deprived of a useful and regular tool to manage students. In the staff room, they talk longingly about the need for better discipline.  They say that the girls consider SEGA a country club, and don't have good school habits, because we don't hit them.  They say that beating a student is a clear, unequivocal means of punishment, and once it's administered the slate is clean and the problem is over.  Any other form of punishment is just too fraught with ideas of suitability and efficacy.  Some students seem to believe this, too.  Nobody at school, it seems, can imagine a world with both proper discipline and the absence of corporal punishment. 

 Another form of punishment is cleaning.  School cleaning in Africa is not done by employees, like janitors.  It's done by the students.  Washing blackboards, sweeping, picking up trash, mopping, scrubbing latrines, washing  up after meals, carrying water, serving lunch and tea to the teachers, even gardening, trimming grass and bushes, irrigating with buckets, and creating hardscape (as in, carrying rocks) - all are student jobs.   Students are assigned these jobs outside of class, before the start bell rings and after school.  If they don't do these jobs, they can be beaten for it, or simply assigned more cleaning as punishment.

At SEGA, we go in for cleaning as punishment in a big way.  I am currently in trouble with the Matron (supervisor of girls outside of class) because yesterday I refused to let her take my Form 2 students out of class for yard cleaning during the middle of an important lesson.  I am an affront to good order, as they were supposed to be punished for not doing the yard cleaning earlier.  

Interestingly, the only thing that is never a consideration for punishing student misbehavior at SEGA is lowering their grades. Last year, we encountered a huge cheating ring in Form 2, during a mid-term exam.  The punishment?  A letter to the parents, and being suspended from class for a week to do some large projects on the grounds.  At no time was giving them an 'F', or even docking their grades, considered.

There may be a considerable reason for that:  In Forms 2 and 4, (9th and 11th grades) the students don't really get a final mark from the school, they succeed or fail on the basis of their performance on the National Exam.  A student could  miss every 3rd day at school, do no homework, and sleep during class, but if she makes  45 or above on her NECTA, she goes on to the next level .  The students know this, and the teachers do too.  So there is a tendency to consider grades as separate from discipline, even in the other forms.

I'm glad I don't have to witness students being beaten.  I am sometimes frustrated by the lack of support given by the school and other teachers to a commitment to a discipline model without corporal punishment.  But we have lots of policy and procedure issues that need to be worked out.  It's not the TZ-way to push through a lot of decisions and then stick to them.  The path here wanders quite a bit more than that. 

And I think about my own discipline, both now and at that age.  I was certainly not a model student;  no goody two-shoes, I.  I did things to deadline, for grades, and because I liked to do them, in that order.  I don't think I would have been different if I had been afraid of being beaten.

Our girls have done well on their National Exams, and they don't seem less disciplined than my students at the school where I did my practice teaching,  which had quite an 'active' DM.  Kids this age are irrepressible and naturally make bad choices.  I've come to believe that if they expect to be hit,  it no more changes their behavior than anything else.  Students will avoid being hit, and being caught in the first place, but some will still be lazy, or cut-up, or not do their chores.  Some are Tom Sawyer, some are Huckleberry Finn.  Consistent modeling of good behavior by the teachers, consistent reward of good behavior on the part of students, and consistent punishment for  known infractions is the answer, but it's not the solution.

 

*Karibu Tanzania, lit., "Welcome to Tanzania".  A mildly ironic phrase used by PCV's to express some of the interesting and intractable anomalies of life in the country.