Children’s Advocate says no to beating children

WESTERN BUREAU:

Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison says that while she stands firmly on the side of disciplining children in order to teach them proper behaviour, she is totally against using physical abuse as a disciplinary measure.

“Discipline is part of what makes a functioning society work effectively, but discipline has to be about guidance, inculcating those morals and values that determine behaviour and taking corrective steps to ensure that the behaviour we want our children to model is, in fact, inculcated,” said Gordon Harrison, who gave the keynote address at the graduation ceremony for Anchovy High School’s class of 2021 at the St James-based school yesterday. “Discipline is different from physical contact.”

The children’s advocate referenced the case of four-year-old Nashaun Brown, the child who was brutally beaten by his stepfather at their St Catherine home after it was deemed that he was eating too slowly. The child subsequently died in hospital on Sunday from the injuries he sustained. The abusive stepfather has since been arrested.

“The debate [on corporeal punishment] will continue for a very long time, but I think that these instances, and certainly the very recent case of the four-year-old, who has met his demise because of being beaten, serve as a rallying call that we need to look at the words that we use to describe certain actions,” said Gordon Harrison. “We have to stop saying ‘don’t beat’ and instead emphasise positive parenting, and ask, what are some of the workable measures that you can use to ensure that we do not have children growing up like wild beasts?”

Gordon Harrison’s position mirrors that of Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who spoke to the issue in Parliament on Tuesday when he declared that he was willing to go against the cultural norm, which supports flogging, and pass legislation to outlaw corporal punishment.

“In the same way we have addressed and condemned other forms of violence in this House, we must unequivocally, loudly, and resolutely condemn violence against children,” said Holness as he, too, referenced the brutal beating of young Nashaun.

Educator Yvonne Miller-Wisdom, the principal of the St James-based John Rollins Success Primary School, who has operated on both sides of the corporal punishment debate throughout her years in the education system, wants legislation to be put in place to create a firm policy on corporal punishment.

“When I was a young teacher, I used corporal punishment, and the students would comply. But the type of children we have today are very sensitive, and if you shout at them, much less spank them, they get upset,” said Miller-Wisdom. “So we just have to be careful and abide by the norms and guidelines that are set out.”

Nadine Josephs, the mother of an 11-year-old child, says she is fully in support of abolishing corporal punishment, saying that she had had bad experiences with this type of punishment when she was a child.

“I am not a proponent for corporal punishment as it has left me with many scars throughout my life. Extreme corporal punishment should be criminalised as beating a child with a stick, belt, hose, or anything else is not acceptable, and, quite frankly, is abuse,” Josephs told The Gleaner.

However, taxi operator Donald Smith says that he sees nothing wrong with flogging a child if the child falls out of line. In fact, he is of the view that the current breakdown in discipline across the society is as a result of ‘saving the rod and spoiling the child’.

“Once the punishment is administered in a responsible way, I see nothing wrong ... . My grandmother use to spank me when I did bad things, and I never like it, so I always try to be on her good side ... . Beating kept me grounded, and I am none the worse for it,” said Smith.