The night before my meeting regarding caning at Sanity School, where I am teaching, I was doing some pretty thorough research on corporal punishment. As expected, the research shows that it does little to discipline and in fact, creates a cycle of violence and dissident behaviour that endures through adulthood, not to mention pain and fear. Armed with the statistics and my counter quotes from the Bible, I entered the meeting with the headmaster, proprietor and 10 teachers.
The headmaster introduced me and explained why we were there. I continued in explaining the research that I had found about the long term effects of caning. I was all but laughed out of the room by the entire staff! Unfortunately, the use of the cane is deeply engrained in Ghanaian culture, introduced by the colonialists, and it is very alien for them to hear that it is wrong and harmful to children. This is not helped by the Biblical endorsement encompassed in the much quoted ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’. I countered this argument with my newly acquired knowledge of the Bible which disintegrated into a bit of a witch hunt as the headmaster announced, to a shocked audience, that I was not a Christian; another alien concept in Ghana.
The headmaster and teachers attempted to convince me that African children were different and that, and I quote, ‘Africans were born to be caned’! I was very vocal about the fact that I did not buy that explanation and that a child is a child regardless of country of origin. They ended the meeting by marching a young boy into the centre of the room and explaining that he had been amongst a group who had kicked down a school wall. They turned to me and asked what his punishment should be, if not caning. I suggested that the boy should have to be involved in the re-building of the wall to learn his lesson. This resulted in another great guffaw from the teachers. I was pretty downhearted by the end of the meeting and although I did not want to preach or appear self righteous, I felt that my view had not been listened to and that I had wasted my time.
To cap it off, after school I walked to the taxi rank to get home and grabbed a coke at a local spot bar. I was unfortunately accosted by a slightly mad man who was shouting at me and then started pushing me. The local people protected me and in the end I got home safe, tired and feeling a little defeated.
The next day I arrived at school to find a meeting of a few parents in the headmaster’s office. The headmaster explained to me that he had called the meeting to discuss the punishment of the children who had kicked over the wall. What followed was the most adult and orderly meeting I have ever witnessed in Ghana; no shouting, no pointing, no mobile phones going off, no interruptions. It was agreed that instead of dishing out a caning, the parents would pay for the wall materials and take the funds from the pocket money they usually give their kids and that the students would have a hand in re-building the wall. I was very, very happy to see that my ideas had in fact been taken on board, in their own way. This was furthered by the fact that, a few days later, we held a follow up meeting with the teachers and came up with some alternative punishments. It was a hard slog but we did come to some compromises and the headmaster announced that for the next 2 weeks the school is a cane-free zone for the teachers to test the new methods and report back. A brilliant breakthrough!
The next morning I arrived at school and was about to start my lesson when I heard screaming in the playground. I rushed out to find one of the older girls having what looked like a fit and her friends trying to calm her. She was taken into the headmaster’s office and laid on the floor. I asked someone to call a doctor but was told that this was a ‘spiritual problem’ rather than anything medical. The girl was screaming that her head and her heart were hurting and was writhing around the floor. I became more and more distressed and sure she needed medical help but the headmaster and one of the older teachers proceeded to hit the girl’s head and scream ‘the blood of Jesus’ into her ears! After their spiritual healing did not seem to take effect, they conceded that perhaps she did need to see a doctor and she was taken to the local health centre. I later learned she was admitted to hospital and is now out and fine after a 5 day stay.
My day didn’t get any better when my Junior High School 1 class handed in their first homework for me. From 34 kids I got 3 versions of homework copied by everyone else. I was pretty cross but had to laugh when, as the copying had gone on and on, the kids’ handwriting had got worse and worse so by the end the last copier was making some pretty humorous mistakes. The children in my classes are nice kids and I do think the majority of them want to learn, they just have no discipline. The teachers are the worst disciplined of all, as they wander in and out of my classroom as I am teaching, play with their mobile phones during lessons and are perpetually late- I have a gargantuan task on my hands!
Every week now, I hold a girl empowerment club with the older girls in the school. For our first topic, I asked if women were equal to men. This sparked pretty interesting debate, uncovering their view that when a woman is married she is the property of the man, it is a woman’s duty to cook clean and rear children and most worryingly, that it is right for a husband to beat his wife if she has done something wrong. Most of the girls told me that they had witnessed their mothers being beaten by their fathers and all but one are happily resigned, if not looking forward to, this being their fate as well. More than anything I want to provide somewhere young girls, ranging from 14-18 years, can talk about things that bother them and questions they have and can’t necessarily ask anyone else. It’s a lot of fun and I will keep updating my blog with subjects covered.
Last Thursday Jonny and I also held a film club for the kids at the orphanage. We arranged to use the donated projector of a nearby community radio station and played The Lion King to the 25 kids. I still can’t help but get a bit emotional when Mufasa dies. There were only a few fights over sharing the popcorn we’d brought and around 100 trips to the toilet (by that I mean to pee on the ground outside) but most of the children were enthralled by the film and excited to be leaving the house, so we’ll be doing this again next week too!
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