Aggression brings no glory
My heart sinks to a low whenever I read about corporal punishment to children. The feeling was no different recently when I read the report by Sir Frank Peters about the many dangers of hitting our children.
Danger not just to them, but society on the whole. Just as we can’t keep kicking a dog and assume it will never turn on us and bite back, similarly we cannot keep hitting our children and assume they will not retaliate at some time in their life… as they appear to be now doing.
The Banghladesh society we know is not one to make us proud. It has so many faults, one wonders where to begin listing them and if we think otherwise, we are fooling ourselves. As Sir Frank has observed, there is a lot of aggression about that brings no glory only shame to the nation. Even the learned halls of our universities are filled with aggression and pertty hate. I sometimes feel like weeping because I see no light at the end of the tunnel, just a once-proud society decaying rapidly by the day.
Sir Frank argues that corporal punishment teaches our children to become violent… for them to see violence as the quick and eassy solution to all problems (inside and outside the classroom). There are hundreds of studies worldwide in his support, but we’re ignoring their sound advice
I once had great love and hope for Bangladesh, but not the Bangladesh it is today. Just like the effects of DDT, corporal punishment needs to end before we can expect a better society to blossom.
Nancy Muid
Uttara
All for tuition
Parents are now more worried about their children doing well or bad in exams. Almost all guardians want that their children should always excel others in classrooms and this is where private tuition has come to play even at the primary level of education, with students being coached privately before and after school hours without having the time to play around or even just sit idle. This has become more so after the introduction of the Primary Education Completion Exams. Children excelling others in classrooms, even at the primary level, have become something for parents to boast of. But the merit list has always been populated by all students but the one who tops and parents should also consider this. Primary education certainly has a role to play in making the nation educated but academic excellence, or the forced academic excellence for that matter, rarely continues throughout student life.
Hussain Zaman
Mirpur
