The Art of Child Assault

WHILE on holiday in Namibia, I closely followed the newspapers to see what stories made the headlines.

One that caught my attention was the story about the court case on corporal punishment.The child was allegedly assaulted by the teacher because he failed a test and when he passed a test, he was assaulted again. Now this is the part where I got confused. Was he beaten because he passed or was it because he did not fail? Judgement is still pending and I’m eager to know what the court will decide.When I was in school, I thought corporal punishment was a subject that was taught at teachers’ training college, because my teachers were very good at it. The course name, according to our speculation was, ‘The Art of Child Assault’.In the first year, young teachers did the subject, ‘Cane whipping’. We thought they had to do that subject in the first year to give them chance to grow into their canes, so that by the time they graduated, they were masters in whipping.In the second year, we were certain that they did something like, ‘Whipping preparation’, on how to prepare a child to be caned. Girls got hit on their hands and boys got theirs on their behinds. Before a whipping, a child is sent to get a cane from another teacher with words like: ‘go and get a cane. Today I will beat you so hard you will long for someone that you’ve never met before’. The teacher went on and on about how he was going to beat you and you truly believed him.Some class mates started to sweat during that whipping preparation and some strange panic sounds and smells were usually picked up from those with bad stomachs. They usually started with the girls who queued for their punishment. The brave girls in front who wanted it to be over and done with, in the middle of the queue was a lot of pushing and stamping, ‘you go, no you go’, at the back were the dancers.They were the beautiful girls in class who were very afraid of a whipping. The reason why we called them dancers was because of the way they performed during a caning. They held their hands up behind the backs of their heads or ears and jumped up and down while making strange noises. The whipping teacher had to try several times because the dancing girl pulled her hand away. When the cane finally found the target, they went down with the hands between their legs, before coming up again and shaking their hands in the air.The third year, they did, whipping psychology. We were certain about that. In this subject, we believed they were taught how to get into the head of the child. While the boys were called to the front of the queue, the teacher paraded in front of them with the cane, bending it and whipping in the air. Teachers named their canes and during his parade, the boys had to call out the name of the cane. The teacher would say something like; ‘who will do the killing today?’ and then the boys would call out the canes’ name and the teacher would say, at the top of his voice, ‘you lie, I will do the killing’.He would then ask; ‘who will do the killing today’ and the boys called out the name of the teacher, he again said, at the top of his voice, ‘you lie; the cane will do the killing’.We could never work out what they did in their fourth year.

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