Understanding Corporal Punishment in Myanmar Schools

This is a sensitive controversial topic both internationally and in Myanmar. I want it to be known that I can only speak of my own personal experience. As always, these are my own opinions and not reflective of Peace Corps nor the US government. 

Let me paint you a picture:
It’s 11:15am and you are walking to your next class. You haven’t had any breaks yet. You’ve also been up since 5am. Like everyday, you started your day going to the market, preparing you and your family’s breakfast and lunches for the day. You then head on to the private tutoring you hold before school to provide extra income for your family. You walk into the classroom. Half of the students are fighting with each other and the other half is asleep or didn’t even bother to arrive on time. You think I am a teacher. I deserve better respect. You start picking up your tone of voice as the monsoon rain starts to pick up too. A few kids start to complain they are getting wet from the leaky ceilings and the open windows. But if you shut the windows its too dark as the power is out again. The cardboard paneling separating your 60 students from the equally packed classroom next door is not doing any good keeping the rote learning separate. This is all usual though. The foreign teacher you have been assigned is asking your students too difficult questions. You are embarrassed your students can’t answer; though you told them the answers yesterday. You are ashamed your students are so stupid. This same foreign teacher is looking at you again because she thinks the students are not under control. So you pick up the cane stick and set to work disciplining the most troubling students. There that should keep them contained for a while, you think. And as the class settles you turn back to the foreign teacher and wonder why she is looking so afraid. You eyes tell a defensive story. Can’t you see this is how its done?

Its easy to say corporal punishment in school is wrong. But you tell me how easy is it to not use it if you were a teacher in the story above? Now I am in no way trying to justify corporal punishment. Child psychology tells us it is inexcusable and damaging to a child’s development. But it’s important for me and you to recognize the human element of this: We are creatures of habit. We are also creatures of a learned behavior. How can you imitate a habit, unlearn a behavior when you have never seen another way? How then do you do so in a classroom of 60+ in a poorly lit thinly walled classroom? An experienced teacher skilled in positive discipline management techniques would struggle in this environment, make no mistake.

Corporal punishment was a topic that I did not think would affect me so sensitively. It was a topic we breezed through in training, so much that I really didn’t think I would have an issue with it. My naivety was met day one with reality. There is no happy story to this blog post about how I convinced a whole school that corporal punishment is morally wrong and transitioned them to solely positive discipline classrooms. But this is a blog post that I think can bring better light about the ever-complex reality of a Myanmar classroom and the discipline strategies currently at work. It is also a story of the dichotomy I feel everyday as I held both harsh criticism and patient understanding of my coworkers.

I tried many methods at my school and with my co-teachers to find positive discipline alternatives. Let’s give the students with the best behavior all class a piece of candy at the end of class. Students that are late will have to stay after school with Teacher Kelly and pick up trash around the school. Let’s encourage right and wrong answers with a smile and encouragement. All attempts failed miserably in a co-teaching setting. At best I have struck collaboration with my coworkers: “I cannot ask you to change your methods when you teach alone but you will not use corporal punishment when I work alongside you.” As I laid out my terms I was fully aware I was doing nothing to convince or change someone’s opinion about corporal punishment. My success was not about being so rigid and judgmental we could not learn from each other at all. My success was in showing there could be another way. And though I often failed in showing it as a viable method, I never stopped encouraging my students to do better, to be different in my class, to respect one another, themselves, and me. My success was showing that I take this seriously no matter how much you joke about me.

I would be some sort of super teacher to say these lack luster attempts didn’t bring on a hyper self-criticism of myself and my own ability as a teacher. Because these failures very much made me question everyday if corporal punishment was even worth contesting. I put a big burden on myself to constantly show that positive discipline can and will work. And when positive discipline strategies didn’t work and I was removed from a class because of poor behavior or I needed support from another teacher in the room I felt like I had failed. How can these teachers take me seriously when what I am requesting from them may not even be possible in the current Myanmar context? In a classroom with 60+ students? In a school that allows teachers to be pulled out of class at all hours for meetings or donations? In an education system that each year plies more paperwork, new curriculum when it faces an ever growing teacher shortage?

I feel much compassion for my coworkers. Mostly these are kind, generous, and hardworking women. Women I have trusted and befriended. But I see them as by products of their own educational upbringing. And at times it seemed that the students really didn’t mind. Many times my students would laugh and egg the teacher on to hit them or their classmate more. All of it being some kind of joke that I wasn’t a part of. I felt resigned to keep my opinions to myself as I came to terms that this is what has always been done. I would have continued to dutifully carry on this way too. Thinking next to nothing of it until I had the littlest reminders come from one of the littlest people in my life. One trusted grade 3 neighbor let me in on a little secret. Here’s what she had to say: “My school teacher always hits me when I don’t understand or if I don’t write fast enough or if I don’t remember. Teacher Kelly never hits me. When I don’t understand her, she helps me or she says it again or she draws a picture so I can understand. So that’s why Teacher Kelly is my favorite teacher and I love her the most.”

Like my gr 3 friend, I think of my other students who trust me in a way they can’t with their own teachers. I think of my students who know when they are being disruptive that means they are losing their own time with Teacher Kelly. I am reminded daily when I do see corporal punishment and I feel a pain resonate in my chest as I try and keep my composure. Yet it can still knock me off me feet. Yet I still gasp too loudly when I do see it. I am most glad that at the end of day no matter how stressed or disrespected I can feel in the classroom I never forget that they are only children seeking my attention. Children seeking my love. It is this same reminder I would say to myself when I saw my colleagues do what they have always done. They are only children, can’t there be another way?