- Recent incidents have brought to light the callous attitude of the school authorities towards ensuring the safety of their children and protecting them from all kinds of abuse.
- The onus of ensuring safety in fact lies with the teaching and the non-teaching community.
- Despite the Union of Women and Child Development banning corporal punishment in 2010, this form of punishment still remains prevalent due to the widespread belief that it is an effective method to discipline wards.
- Even spanking, canning and other physical and verbal forms of abuse injure and insult the victims.
- The guidelines of treatment of children must be thoroughly publicized among teachers, parents and children to influence positive behavior.
- Training programs should equip teachers with humane, practical and effective skills to deal with children within and outside classrooms.
- Academic and allied inputs should be age-appropriate and inculcated by skilled teachers.
- Stimulating teaching methods and a health student-to-teacher ratio should be maintained to invigorate students’ interests.
- Labs must be built to demonstrate experiments and heighten the interest of the children.
- Poor remuneration and conditions of service repels the best talents away from the field of teaching as a result of which the atmosphere is such that the students’ energies are not channeled into constructive and meaningful avenues.
- These are also collectively the result of the least attention regarded to basic education by successive governments in India.
- Hopefully, with universal and free compulsory education now becoming a basic right, the situation will change.
- Read at:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-cruel-neglect/article6261863.ece