THE use of a cane on children in today’s world, especially the “developed” parts of it, is labelled “violence”. The word covers a plethora of situations: one stroke of a light cane on a hand is violence; hitting a person until he bleeds is violence; killing a person is violence; war is violence; bombing buildings and people is violence.

Much as I am against violence, I feel using a light cane, in a controlled manner, and at appropriate times (when other methods have failed) to drive home a point about one’s behaviour, is not violence per se. Just like the mere use of morphine is not drug abuse per se.

Caning has been done in schools to discipline children, so why do we still have rowdies who slapped and threw chairs at a teacher in Nibong Tebal recently? This incident is only the tip of the iceberg of school discipline. Were the errant students not caned enough and would more caning change their behaviour? The answer is NO. By this age (secondary school), it is too late for caning.  

Character building has to be done early in life. Great teachers of the past used to say “give me a child until he is seven and I will make a man of him”. Very young children learn by imitation. As they grow, their natural desire to discover and explore becomes apparent. However, they are unable to reason until around the age of ten. So how do you teach them good values by seven?

If children were exposed only to good values in their formative years, they would acquire those values in the natural course of learning from their environment. But this is not the reality today.

Their environment is filled with more negative or bad values than the good. TV programmes and movies are the major sources of such negative values, and they deliver those values in such a powerful way that they stick in the minds of children.

When TV and movies glorify violence, children exposed to it grow up with the idea that life is meant to be lived that way. They feel there is greatness, heroism, etc. in such behaviour. And  they start behaving that way from pre-school. 

Some years back, the UK police had said that it was possible to identify among pre-school children potential gangsters or violent adults of the future. If no effective remedial action is taken at this stage, the negative behaviour would become deep-set due to repetition and impossible to change at a later stage.

Use of the cane on children is condemned based on the findings of doctors who see child-abuse cases. This is wrong. In cases of child abuse the fault is not that of the cane but of the person wielding the cane. It is that person who needs help. Such cases can happen when a child is out of control and the teacher or parent, in desperation, loses his senses and starts caning not knowing how to use the cane and when to stop. But why was the child allowed to become so naughty in the first place?

I have seen an experienced kindergarten teacher who wields the cane only when necessary, and works miracles turning “very naughty” children around without injuring them and with the approval of the parents.

Using a light cane judiciously during the early years of a child, if its use is merited, is a forgotten art. It neither causes physical or psychological injury nor leads to children harbouring vengeful thoughts. The purpose is to jolt the children’s mind into remembering that what they did is not to be repeated. Rather than condemning its use, teachers and parents should be taught the proper way of using it during the early years of childhood. It is only effective during this critical period.

Source: The Sun – March 18, 2010