Sir Frank Peters :
If we do nothing to stop corporal punishment in our schools, madrassas and homes, we are collectively complicit in a woeful crime against man and God by aiding and abetting the evil practice to ensure the next generation will be even worse than we are now.
How could hitting a child, in any setting for whatever reason, be justified? Civilised people don’t hit people. Children are people too.
It is the moral duty of every schoolteacher to do all in his or her power to ensure every pupil is much better informed than they, or their parents were, when they were at their age. It is the unwritten law of every generation to do all in its power to ensure the generation that follows is better than the present. Not to fulfill that duty, goes against the laws of the universe and the enrichment of mankind.
If we are not moving forward and making progress, we are throwing-in the towel and giving-up, never to learn what we’re really capable of achieving.
Imagine if medical science were to screech to a stop and declare, ‘we’re happy to have discovered aspirin, morphine, or some other pain-relieving, life-saving, life-improving medication… let’s just call it quits and leave it at that’. Where would we be today? Resting on one’s laurels is not an option of any noble pursuit.
The world rotates, constantly, ever changing, ever evolving. Its inhabitants need to do likewise, in a forward direction. Standstill is not improvement. To accept the past as our best achievable, should not even be a thread in the tapestry of our mind. People who never give their best effort to whatever task they perform (whether paid or unpaid) will never have the joy of knowing what their best really is. It’ll remain a mystery in their strongbox of self-belief forever.
Only those who make the effort to give their personal best, beyond their present level of acceptance by way of heart, soul, and mind come close to getting a look-see glimpse to what their best really is.
On May 23, 2010, Musa Ibrahim became the first son of the soil to climb the majestic Mount Everest (8,848.86m/29,031.7 ft.). Nishat Majundar became the first female Bangladeshi to follow in his snow prints on May 19, 2012. Topping those fantastic achievements, Wasfia Nazreen – activist, environmentalist, social worker and writer – became the first Bengali to complete the Seven Summits on 18 November 2015.
Together they created mountaineering royalty, put Bangladesh on the historic map of mountaineering achievers, became inspirational to millions worldwide and shone a spotlight on the adage, nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. Encouragement aided their ascent.
Getting to know one’s best is forever elusive. An individual never really gets to know his or her personal best because even if they achieve what they consider to be their best, there’s always the nagging thought running loose in their minds, ‘maybe if I did this or that differently the end result would have been much better.’ Such is human nature.
Famed Irish playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature winner George Bernard Shaw once wrote: ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ Much discussion and debate has ensured since that phrase was immortalized in his 1903 play ‘Man and Superman’.
Among the interpretations, could be this meaning… while the teacher him/herself is incapable of achieving greatness, he/she can encourage others to do so, whether they themselves believe the pupil is capable or not. The greatest and least expensive gift any teacher (or parent) can gift a child is not what is taught academically, but what the child is encouraged and inspired to do spiritually. Encourage… encourage… encourage!
If what they say is true that in every child there are the makings of a saint, encouragement is an essential propellant to speed the process. The power of encouragement mystifies and amazes. It calls upon magical invisible forces to rush to a person’s aid that more often than not generates previously unimagined positive results. Every great achievement was once thought to be impossible.
While a teacher, or parent, may not be properly equipped to teach a school curriculum (and many aren’t) there is no excuse for them not to at least encourage pupils to succeed where they, themselves, may have failed and thus share in the pupil’s success. We can’t all be Prime Ministers and suchlike, but we can be fulfilled noble citizens.
Emblazoned across the walls of every classroom in education establishments in large BOLD letters should be the word ENCOURAGEMENT as a reminder to the teacher. And the word alongside should be, NEVER.
Never… never… never… knock someone’s effort however poor they may seem. The largest undiscovered territory in the world lies under a child’s thatch of hair. Maybe there’s another Bangabandhu or Sheikh Hasina trapped inside trying to get out.
Encouragement will always release the potential. Criticism and corporal punishment, will only suppress, maim, or strangle it.
(Sir Frank Peters is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, an award-winning writer, royal goodwill ambassador, humanitarian, and a profoundly esteemed foreign friend
of Bangladesh.)
