Timely intervention by guards

According to a report in Tuesday’s Newsday, the female security guard saw the infant’s mother shaking the child viciously outside the children’s ward and warned her to stop. When the mother continued her action, the security officer called the St Joseph Police Station and, with the help of another female security guard, took the child away from the mother. The mother was later charged for abuse.

Exactly why the mother was shaking her child is not yet known. But the very fact that she was at the hospital means that the child was probably ill. Yet, instead of trying to comfort the infant, who was perhaps fussing, the 24-year-old mother got angry with her.

She should thank her lucky stars, however, that the guards intervened, since with a child that age the mother could well have broken the infant’s neck.

And that the guards took action shows that there are still individuals in this society who have a social conscience — one that is all the more noteworthy given the fact that ours is a society which often treats children callously.

This may be an unpleasant truth, but it is one that must be faced.

There is an unfortunately large segment of the population who would question whether the police should have any right to interfere with a mother who is ‘disciplining’ her child. And even many of those who would admit that the mother’s action seemed to have crossed a line would still argue that spanking, whipping, and beating children help make them into disciplined adults. It is a peculiar view in a society where colonial rulers once whipped enslaved and indentured persons as a matter of course, but such is our reality.

The common belief is that not beating children will cause them to become, at best, undisciplined and, at worst, violent criminals.

No one has ever thought to test this folk wisdom by the relatively simple method of surveying inmates to find out if they never got licks when they were children.

Then again, ours is a system where imprisonment is often not seen as sufficient punishment in itself, but where strokes with a rod can still form part of the sentence.

Indeed, it was mere months ago that Prime Minister Patrick Manning stated his intention of amending the law to close a loophole which has been allowing prisoners to escape being whipped.

The only bright spot has been the stalwart refusal of the Education Ministry to restore corporal punishment in schools — although at the same time the legislation that has outlawed this had not yet been proclaimed. But the technocrats at the Ministry are well aware of what the research shows — that physically punishing children does not teach discipline and certainly does not teach subjects.

Indeed, connecting physical hurt to learning, if it has any effect, will turn a child off education. What is especially worrisome in this issue, however, is that the Ministry’s wisdom has apparently not filtered down to teachers, since a recent report conducted by Professor Ramesh Deosaran showed that most teachers favour corporal punishment.

So our society still has a long way to go before we can call ourselves truly civilised. But there still is hope, as the actions of those two security guards has shown.