Uganda’s Ministry of Education: Tough on Holiday teaching, Soft on Corporal punishment in schools
This month, the media has been awash with stories of schools which were closed because of teaching pupils during the holidays. The Ministry of education even instructed the police to ensure that those schools do not open until they are cleared by ministry. This is a positive step however, if the ministry is so much concerned about children’s rights, how comes it is virtually silent and non-pro-active as regards dealing with the culprits of corporal punishment in schools.
Corporal punishment is a cancer that is slowly but steadily eating Uganda’s education system. At one time, we thought that it was only practiced in primary schools, but as we speak now, it is the order of the day in many secondary schools especially in private ones. Can you imagine that we live in a country where senior four students receives stokes of the Cain for failing mathematics??
Can you imagine that we live in a country where senior six students are severely flogged for failing History? What kind of Ugandans are we training? Can you believe that this is happening in a country that is bragging of having domesticated the Convention on the rights of the child (CRC) under the so called Children Act, 1996? Corporal punishment in Ugandan schools is torture, cruel and degrading treatment and punishments and is therefore violation of fundament human rights.
It has become so much accepted that even civil society organization do not seem to be bothered by it. Do you know that even some university lecturers slap students and go away it? We are training a generation of violent fathers and mothers in this country. We have allowed the abused-abuser syndrome to eat our society. This is a fatal time bomb. I urge the pupils and students reading this to challenge the ministry by taking their abusers to the Uganda Human rights Commission on Buganda road or seek the help of human rights NGOs such as Foundation for Human Rights initiative in Nsabya. I urge the Ministry to come out clearly on corporal punishment in schools. Silence and lip service implementation will not take us far.
Kizito Michael George
Kizitomg@gmail.com
