Teachers should discipline with dignity
COMMENT | Teachers need to learn "disciplining with dignity." This is today's educational keys. That’s the phrase that came to my mind when I read about the case in Johor where a student was caned by a teacher for calling the latter “effeminate”.
I recall a saying in Islam about teaching. The prophet Muhammad once said, “Teach your children according to the times they are in.”
Then I thought of my 30-year experience as a classroom teacher in Malaysia and the United States, teaching teachers how to teach today’s children, based on the “time they are living in.”
For more than a decade, I taught American teachers who would be teaching children in challenging urban environments such as The Bronx and Harlem in New York City, and in Paterson and Englewood in New Jersey. These are very tough urban areas. I have worked with very challenging students myself – so-called “at-risk-youths” whose next step often led to incarceration, if education failed them...
COMMENT | Teachers need to learn "disciplining with dignity." This is today's educational keys. That’s the phrase that came to my mind when I read about the case in Johor where a student was caned by a teacher for calling the latter “effeminate”.
I recall a saying in Islam about teaching. The prophet Muhammad once said, “Teach your children according to the times they are in.”
Then I thought of my 30-year experience as a classroom teacher in Malaysia and the United States, teaching teachers how to teach today’s children, based on the “time they are living in.”
For more than a decade, I taught American teachers who would be teaching children in challenging urban environments such as The Bronx and Harlem in New York City, and in Paterson and Englewood in New Jersey. These are very tough urban areas. I have worked with very challenging students myself – so-called “at-risk-youths” whose next step often led to incarceration, if education failed them.
Here are my thoughts on what a teacher should be, in order to add nobility to the profession, as well as be proud and passionate about teaching. As proud and passionate as I am about being an educator who has a powerful role to play – helping shape minds and guiding the young to chart and live a productive, ethical, and creative future.
Because education is a gentle profession. And teaching is a subversive act. As a student of the “(Paulo) Freirean idea of conscientization in education,” I believe that teaching is not about helping maintain the status quo and accepting realities, but fundamentally transforming them.
Because realities are subjective and can be changed. That is why we have social and technological revolutions and the “shifting of paradigms – of Kuhnian and Copernican Revolutions” that change how we construct and represent the world.
Our job, as teachers, is to help children be what they wish to be. But first, as the philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche once said about the profession: “Educate, but first, we must educate the educators.”
I’d say that Malay teachers are harsh disciplinarians. Sometimes without reason. Just a show of feudal authority, sanctioned by parents. I think the lack of ability to answer radical questions from the students and failure to understand what teaching, schooling, wisdom, and understanding means, have led these Malay teachers to be defensive. The problem lies in the approach to teacher education, perhaps.
Islamic-Tahfiz schools have teachers who beat students up. As if education is a process of socialization to hudud. This makes no religious sense, going back to the saying of prophet Muhammad – learning styles should correspond to teaching styles, which in turn will help schools become a “happy place of learning.”
Disciplining with dialogue
Discipline children with dialogue. Treat them like little adults. They'll grow as wise as you wish them to. My life in both worlds has given me the opportunity to compare and contrast how cultures raise children and school their “junior members of society.”
Caning may just show that teachers are not prepared to deal with today's complex child. Spare the rod - you may not necessarily spoil the child. The rod is an instrument of mental torture. Democracy came out of the womb of Athens in 5th century BC, not because of the “rod of the Spartan-militaristic city state,” but because of the thoughts of its pre- and post-Socratic philosophers.
How do we get Malaysian teachers to understand, apply and embody the spirit of teaching to the inner sensibility and intelligence of our precious young, rather than resorting to using the rod when we have failed as teachers?
Speak to the conscience of the "troubled child" you feel like caning. You may find out the real reason for the rebellion. Today's classroom teacher needs to be both: Socrates and a lion tamer.
Every tough student who enters your classroom is a marshmallow inside. Know this to survive as a teacher. To educate well. Even in so-called elitist Mara-MRSM schools there exists the worst sort of teachers and wardens too. Some resort to disciplining by beating up the young, doing kungfu and silat gayong on students. These teachers are possessed by the demons of Socratic ignorance, unable to see the light in their practice.
Classroom success has three keys: content, culture, and classroom management. Master these to be a happy teacher. Teachers who love beating up students, destroying students emotionally and cognitively, should undergo counseling.
Good parenting
Parents, too, need to master the art of parenting.
Good parenting is making sure your child does not create trouble in school and disrupt the learning process of others. Parents cannot expect the school to do the parenting. It is a place for optimum learning and good socializing. Be good parents!
A teacher is not a correctional officer, a jail warden. He is to teach. And teach well. It is not enough to know child psychology.
A good teacher is an actor playing many scripts to an audience of many individuals. Understand this. Master it. Children need to be disciplined not by the rod, but by providing engaging intellectual activities that challenges curiosity. In the end we want each child to succeed and to do well in life.
Our task as citizens is to demand a standard of good teaching from our teachers. The role of the Ministry of Education is to help produce good teachers. A teacher, in his or her professional lifetime, can make or break the lives of thousands of children. It is a powerful profession.
A scary one too. A matter of the life-blood of our nation. To be or not to be a dreadful and destructive nation. The type of citizens we will produce in this conveyer belt of social reproduction called schooling.
AZLY RAHMAN is an educator, academic, columnist, and author of seven books. He holds a doctorate in international education development and Master’s degrees in six areas: education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing. He is a member of the Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education. Twitter @azlyrahman. More writing here.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
