Why are adults allowed to make mistakes, but children are not?
There is a horrific misconception out there that beating children (corporal punishment) is obeying a command from God. There is another totally ignorant belief that corporal punishment beats hell out of a child. There is also one that claims corporal punishment serves the best interests of the child.
And there are people who camouflage their own mental demons that torment them and these people perform the abuse and cruelty regularly in Allah’s name.
What chances do a defenceless innocent child, only a few years away from the mother’s womb, have of living a normal childhood and becoming a balanced adult against such influential, compressed flawless ignorance? Many ‘teachers’ do not beat children in their charge allegedly for the child’s good, but for their own good and the personal gratification, they get from doing it.
It is their way of unleashing the tension and frustrations built-up in their own private lives and having a classroom filled wall-to-wall with ‘whipping boys’ is a God send – a perk of the job – in a society that on the main turns a blind eye to the cruelty and damage caused to the children.
Parents generally don’t retaliate when their ‘gift from God’ returns after school or madrasah all bruised, sore, feeling less of a person and howling inwardly for the brutality to stop. They cannot be blamed – they do not know, ignorance has been their lifelong partner, tutor, and friend.
They, unfortunately, had it instilled into them the concept that when a child makes a mistake, he/she needs to be punished, so the mistake is not repeated. Pay particular attention to the word ‘mistake’.
Punishment (read aggression, read corporal punishment) is not and never was the solution to resolving mistakes. If people were to be punished for all their minor infractions, life itself would be an horrendous; one non-stop conveyor belt of cruelty and not worth living.
Mistakes are acceptable to grown-ups… they make them all the time. The difference being that nobody beats him or her when they make a mistake. Why is this cruel punishment reserved exclusively for children? It is a birth right of every child to make mistakes on their highway to learning. The reaction to that mistake is where adults generally go wrong. A child should not be punished for having made the mistake, but intelligently corrected. It is called discipline. A child needs to be disciplined, corrected, shown the right way… not punished.
All of this horror, pain and rivers of tears over the years can be attributed mainly to the mistranslation of one single word, ‘rod’. Many people commonly know the word ‘rod’ to be a thin straight bar, especially made of wood or metal (fishing rod, or a stick by which someone is beaten). The hackneyed expression, common to most homes, schools and madrasahs and repeated throughout the ages, is: “spare the rod and spoil the child”.
We are told it is there in black and white in the “good book”. There’s another one similar to that that says ‘he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him’. And those are perceived to be the only excuses and licence needed to beat a child mercilessly… to do the child a favour… to beat the devil out of him/her. How wrong... how sad... how ignorant.
In Hebrews, the word has a totally different meaning. In Psalms 23:4, it states: “ . . . thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Now, that makes complete sense.
The shepherd’s rod/staff was/is used to encourage, guide, and discipline the sheep towards taking a desired direction, not to beat, hurt or damage them. No shepherd would intentionally damage his stock and reduce his profits.
The correct interpretation of the proverb, therefore, should read, “spare good guidance and spoil the child” and “he who spares good guidance hates his son but he who loves him is careful to discipline him”. Why would anyone think that beating a child is a good thing and it would make him or her better citizens? A damaged child today is a broken adult tomorrow and a potential threat to society. The jails are full of broken adults that were damaged as children.
Poor parenting and poor teaching skills do not justify corporal punishment and those who administer are actually working against the wishes of God.
Mr Peters is a human rights advocate
[email protected]
