On his way back home, at the end of a long and especially hard school day, 10-year-old Dirar was reminded of the constant pain in his hands and the still burning humiliation, of the punishment he received from his math teacher earlier that afternoon.
Dirar had been beaten and scolded because he hadn’t received a good grade on his math exam. His teacher yelled at him and beat Dirar in front of his fellow pupils. The throbbing in his hands lasted far longer than the school day.
“Not uncommon”
On his way back home, at the end of a long and especially hard school day, 10-year-old Dirar was reminded of the constant pain in his hands and the still burning humiliation, of the punishment he received from his math teacher earlier that afternoon.
Dirar had been beaten and scolded because he hadn’t received a good grade on his math exam. His teacher yelled at him and beat Dirar in front of his fellow pupils. The throbbing in his hands lasted far longer than the school day.
“Not uncommon”
The next day, Dirar’s mother went to the al-Tadamun School in the Qarji district of Tripoli. She marched directly into the social worker’s office and said: “My son didn’t do anything impolite, and the teacher does not have the right to punish him in this severe manner.”
Dirar’s mother told the social worker that she was very unhappy with the pedagogical methods used by some teachers at the school, saying that her son would soon begin to loathe school. “I do not want this to happen,” she said.
However, 46-year-old Hanan al-Hadi, the school social worker said: “This is the way our teachers used to discipline us when we were students. It is not uncommon.”
The best method
Al-Hadi believes that corporal punishment, which has been commonly used by teachers since the 1950’s, and has been passed on to this generation of teachers, is the best method to improve the educational and behavioral performance of students.
In 2012, the Ministry of Education issued a resolution banning “beatings and verbal abuse.” The resolution stressed the need to “apply the educational regulations on disciplining students of the educational institutions.” However, most of the schools have not implemented this resolution, especially those outside the capital city of Tripoli.
Thuraya Ayyad, a social worker at the al-Tadamun School, said that teachers resorted to corporal punishment “when pupils do not do their homework, when they become boisterous inside the classroom, or when they fight and misbehave.”
Ayyad supports the use of hitting because “teachers can’t find better methods. We prefer not to resort to beatings, but we couldn’t find any other method of deterrent. We try not to be violent when we beat the students and we avoid beating them on sensitive parts of their bodies.” However, Ayyad acknowledged that this method is causing many students to dread going to school.
Ayyad, however, admitted that there was a backlash to the corporal punishment. “The spread of weapons and the unstable security conditions of the country are causing increased incidents of violence in schools. Students are more tempted than ever to take revenge on their teachers.”
Teachers and students
In several interviews Correspondents conducted with pupils, school loathing was widespread. Nour Muhammad, a pupil at the Nisaa Khalidat School in Tripoli said she still remembers the pain when her teacher hit her on her hand for not wearing the proper school uniform. “I know that I didn’t obey the rules, but I didn’t expect such a punishment,” she said.
Ali Zain Fathi, a student of the February 17 School, previously the “Green Flag School,” in the al-Zawiya city west of Tripoli, described his daily school life by saying: “I hate going to school. It is a bad experience and it starts with the beginning of the school day, specifically when students gather in the morning and line in queues. The teachers gather too and they usually carry sticks to scare students into being quiet and singing the anthem. They use the sticks and insults to discipline us.”
Excessive punishment
The reasons educators give for carrying out corporal punishments are always the same. Students are beaten because of their bad grades or their bad conduct. Moreover, the chaos witnessed by the Libyan society as a whole has also had its impact on schools. Today, each school has its own laws depending on the beliefs of its headmaster and those in charge of it. Students say that punishments are arbitrary.
For example, 10-year-old Aya Fahil al-Bum, told Correspondents that her school obliges young girls to wear the veil and those who don’t or take it off inside or outside the school get beaten.
In the February 17 School in al-Zawiya, pupils told Correspondents that those who put gel in their hair are punished by washing their hair with cold water and have dirt put in it. To top it off, they also get beaten on their hands and feet.
