”THE best thing that’s ever happened to schooling was the banning of corporal punishment,” says Graham Bailey, headmaster of Pinetown Boys High. ”Under the old system a kid could misbehave or not do his homework and he’d get a couple of whacks. Come the end of the year when he failed, his parents would jump up and down and ask why — although they received quarterly reports, it was too easy for them to stay distant from their son’s education. The system we have in place now is, I believe, more efficient.”
So what is now in place? Pinetown Boys High has developed a system of credits, debits and demerits which are in line with proposals made by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education. The school’s governing body, its staff, the prefect body and the representative council of learners collaborated to draw up a code of conduct. Pupils accumulate debit points for infringements of the code of conduct, with offences being split into four categories, depending upon their degree of seriousness. For minor infringements such as occasional late-coming, pupils are punished by being given pages to write or community service to perform without incurring any debits.
Regular bad behaviour or more serious violations result in up to two debits each. After 16 debits the learner earns a first demerit, with a second following at 30 debits, and so on at ever decreasing intervals. Each demerit earns the pupil three hours of detention, and at the third demerit he is suspended.
The sixth demerit, after 70 debits, results in another suspension and an interview with the deputy head, and this time the pupil is also required to see a psychologist. By the time he earns his ninth demerit and third suspension on 90 debits, the pupil has to bring his parents along to be seen by the headmaster.
Finally, at his eleventh demerit (on 100 debits) the governing body appoints a tribunal, before whom the headmaster will probably call for the boy’s expulsion. If the tribunal agrees with the headmaster the finding is referred to the full governing body. They will forward their findings to the Department of Education, which has the final say on the pupil’s expulsion.
The flip side of the coin is a credit system, whereby the boys are given credits for good behaviour and performance, and receive letters of commendation and awards after reaching predetermined numbers of credits. The good points do not cancel the bad — only time does, with the slate being wiped clean at the end of every year.
Not far away from Pinetown Boys High, in Kwandengezi, near Mariannhill, is Ntee Secondary School. There things are not quite so cut and dried. The headmaster, Jabulani Ngidi, sits behind a battle-scarred old desk in his sparsely furnished office, his cellular phone providing his only communication with the outside world. Each of his pupils is meant to pay R230 per year in school fees, but many can’t afford even that. The disciplinary guidelines prepared by the Department of Education have so far born little fruit. Ngidi and his staff have reverted to the cane.
According to Ngidi, other forms of punishment just don’t work in his community. ”We stopped the cane for a while,” he says. ”I told the kids that the law had changed, and the cane was out, and they cheered. But when we tried other forms of discipline we ran into problems. Detention didn’t work, because there’s only one bus to take the kids home, and that leaves at 2.30pm.” Giving pupils lines or pages to write at home also turned out to be unsuccessful, because most of his community’s parents stay uninvolved in their children’s education. ”We struggle to get them to monitor their kids’ normal development, let alone their discipline,” says Ngidi. ”The fact is that they don’t know what to do. Most of these children’s parents never even reached grade 8, so they can’t help their kids very much.”
After encountering detention-related transport problems, parents, teachers and class representatives met and decided that the cane was the best way to go. ”We know that it’s against the law but we also know that we need discipline,” says Ngidi. His cane now lies openly on his desk, and when any of his staff need to discipline a scholar they send the guilty boy or girl to fetch it. Then the pupil is caned in front of his or her classmates. ”The teachers know that they shouldn’t go beyond two or three strokes,” says Ngidi.
”We don’t use the cane very much,” adds Ngidi. ”We haven’t used it once this week.” Considering it’s only 8.30am on a Tuesday, that doesn’t mean much.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, September 4, 2000.
M&G Supplements