A mom speaks
I have always been against the corporal punishment of children and could never understand why people who love their children would ever want to beat them or allow anyone else (teacher or otherwise) to do so.
As a mother of two half-angels at times and half-monsters most other times, I can’t help but agree with Sir Frank Peters when he says “the majority of children will drive you up the wall and many are naturally curious to see how high you will go, but that’s no justification for beating them”.
From my childhood I could not understand the expression ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. Which was taken by most (including me) to mean beat your children to discipline them. I could not understand how the holy books could preach such cruelty, inhumanity, and abuse.
The answer I found in Sir Frank’s recent report in The New Nation (21/10/14) and I’m so pleased to have read it.
In Proverbs 13:24 it states, ‘He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him’.
His report points out that in Hebrew, the word translated as ‘rod’ is the same word used in Psalms 23:4, “thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me”. The shepherd’s rod (or staff, as it’s sometimes called) is used to guide the sheep to prevent them from straying and is NEVER used to beat them.
The truth struck me like a bolt of lightening from Heaven. As Sir Frank writes the proverb should read ‘spare good guidance and spoil the child’.
Can you imagine great holy me like Muhammad (PBUH) or Jesus, who preached universal love, beating a child? – I most certainly cannot. Corporal punishment in schools and homes must end.
Halima Annis
Mirpur 1,
Dhaka
