He fell into a coma because he stole bread from the school canteen. Or worse, get killed because of a hairstyle deemed inappropriate. We are not in the Iran of Islamic fundamentalists, we are in a very Christian Kenya. Corporal punishment in school, used by missionaries and colonialists to impose their authority, is an increasingly alarming phenomenon that the government is trying to eliminate.
The latest case is of 13-year-old Caleb Mwangi. The boy was hungry and saw fit to buy extra bread and tea from the canteen of his school, the Gremon training center in Bamburi, near Mombasa. When he was discovered, he was beaten so brutally that he fell into a coma. The father told British television BBC His son’s wounds were so deep that the surgeon had to remove large pieces of skin from his hip to use as skin grafts. After 11 days of intensive care, Caleb regained consciousness and reported principal Nancy Gachewa: She was the one who beat him and ordered other students to do the same.
Things went well for Caleb, too, because today he can talk about the trauma he experienced. In the last five years, local media reported that more than 20 students had died due to corporal punishment at school. These may include fifteen-year-old Ebbie Noelle Samuels: On March 9, 2019, her mother was called by the institute’s secretary, Gatanga, from Muranga, a town 60 kilometers from Nairobi, to report that her daughter was feeling ill and had been hospitalized. she was transported to a nearby hospital. Ebbie was already dead when he arrived. The school said it was an illness, but he had a deep wound on his head that was consistent with blunt force rather than a fall.
When her mother began investigating on her own, several students told her that Ebbie had been beaten by the vice principal because of her hairstyle. The assistant principal was arrested last January, almost four years after the alleged murder, but denied the charges. “I will do whatever I have to do as long as I live to ensure justice is served for my daughter,” Ebbie’s mother assures her.
“Corporal punishment in schools has a long history in Kenya, dating back to the period when missionaries and colonialists used it to assert their authority,” the BBC recalls. In 2001, the Nairobi government banned this practice, but for many teachers and principals, as well as many parents, it is a necessary practice for the education of boys and girls.
Official bodies such as the Teachers Service Commission, which deals with the training and recruitment of teachers in schools, or NGOs such as Beacon Teachers Africa, are trying to address this phenomenon. Robert Omwa is one of 3,000 teachers at the Kenyan NGO Beacon, who teaches his colleagues how to lead classes without resorting to corporal punishment. “I was skeptical about it at first; BBC – I thought this was Western ideology, that an African child should be beaten. But when I tried it, I felt relieved, relieved.” According to internal data from the Teachers’ Service Commission, cases of serious beatings have more than quadrupled in the past three years. But the majority of cases still remain within school walls.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
