As a taxpayer, I’m always pleased when I see examples of our money being spent on worthwhile causes – such as the Department for International Development’s 2005 report on school experiences in Botswana and Ghana. Their findings on Katsir ‘B’ School were particularly worth funding:
Katsir JSS was a high performing urban school originally founded by British and Ghanaian Methodists in 1858. In 1991 the school was divided into two different schools ‘A’ and ‘B’, occupying different parts of the same two-storey building but with a completely different management and staff. The school was located in a middle class residential area about 50 metres from the sea, surrounded by several nationally renowned educational institutions. Many students lived outside the locality. Parents worked in a wide range of occupations, including professionals (doctors, teachers), carpenters, traders and farmers. Their mothers tended to have low paid jobs. In educational terms, the questionnaire sample indicated that 30% of the fathers had university education compared to 8.3% of the mothers.
OK, so doubtless lots of bright, intelligent young ladies there, well-motivated at home. Perfect for my interests. Let’s see what our intrepid British civil servants uncovered on their holiday at the taxpayers’ expenses. (Sorry, important working trip).
In interviews, teachers claimed to praise and punish equally, although the mode and intensity was sometimes different. The head added that the use of corporal punishment, usually administered by male teachers, was not a frequent practice in the school. Most of the caning that was administered did not exceed six lashes and thus was not recorded in the Discipline Book.
From the students’ perspective caning had a negative effect… Others described the disturbing effect of caning on their studies. When a girl was caned in front of the whole school for fighting she said, ‘…after this, coming to school was difficult.’ Another reported that when she was caned for non-payment of school fees, ‘…I felt like never coming to school again.’
Yet another girl put it this way: ‘When I am afraid I will be caned, I find it difficult to come to school’. For other female and male students, their most embarrassing days in school were when they got caned for various offences. Girls in particular disliked corporal punishment, which they were subject to by the teachers and prefects.
In summary, this was a high performing school with low drop out.
The incongruity of the final sentence made me smile, as if the British government officials were somehow trying to establish a link between their previous paragraphs and their conclusion. (Was the report secretly commissioned by the old guard in the UK education department, I wonder?). And how interesting that punishment of six strokes or less are not deemed serious enough to be recorded in the Discipline Book. The look on a girl’s face when the Headmaster tells her that she’s to be punished and reaches for said tome can only be imagined.
I fancy being a civil servant: I need a team to work with me at high salaries and on lavish expenses accounts to investigate caning techniques in Asia. Any candidates out there?
Abel: It’s odd that your post re Ghana and civil servants is still out there with ‘No Comments’ when the chewing gum saga generated such heated debate. Very odd. I’d hate for you to think that you readers aren’t interested in civil servants in Ghana (I’m sure they’re just busy today), so I’ll get the ball rolling and we’ll see where it goes…. Shouldn’t we give these chaps the benefit of the doubt? After all thorough scientific investigation requires that the hypothesis be rigorously tested. Any comments??
Rob – thanks for sparing my blushes by ending the silence – I’m glad at least one person out there was interested in this post! Perhaps if the Ghanaians had chewed gum at school, this one would have had more reaction?
(It’s always a mystery to me how some posts end up with a couple of dozen comments, and others with very few indeed: there seems to be no discernable logic).
Abel, I was just talking to a very vanilla friend, but I thought you’d be interested in her comment. She has just begun to work for the public service, and said that it is a good thing. If it didn’t exist, all those guys would be out there stuffing up the economy.
I don’t know what to say about the post except that the article in question has got a real flavor of Orientalism. I can summarize it like this “This is what those people over THERE do, look at that, and where would they have been without us white enlightened Europeans anyway.”
Another thought I had is that I think it’s a barbarian thing to cane a kid for not paying tuition, like a kid has something to do with that anyway.
As far as r/l school punishment goes, I can add that back in Soviet Union, when I was in the elementary and middle school, the punishment would be detention after school for not doing homework and corner time if late for class (facing the class). I got in trouble quite a bit, but neither of those did anything to my desire to sleep in and procrastinate, just as my husband’s birch doesn’t always do it for me as a grown, albeit young, woman.
I loathe the whole, patronising, condescending, post-imperialist tone of the article, to be frank – never mind the abject waste of money that could have been spent on far more needy causes in the developing world. And whilst there are some truly wonderful, dedicated people in the public sector, it does sometimes feel as though Rob’s friend has too true a point. Still, the report got my kinky antennae buzzing!
I’m surprised, Amber, that corner time involved facing the class – the opposite way round to the UK. Perhaps if they’d birched you at school, and your husband sent you to stand in the corner, it might have been more successful?! (Actually, cancel that – marital birchings sound far more interesting!!!)