He claimed that a softer approach involving counselling would be more effective in discipling students. In this approach, he added, students could be punished by making them do community work or denying them certain privileges.
“You can whack a child ten times and nothing will change,” he said. “But take away their privilege of going out on Saturdays, for instance, and you’ll see how effective that is.”
He said children nowadays were unlikely to take harsh punishments quietly.
“Hitting them can make them worse because kids nowadays know how to question things,” he said, adding that after questioning why they had been hit, they might come to dangerous conclusions.
“In the past, you hit a child and he’ll keep quiet and go back home but now times have changed.”
Nayagam was responding to an FMT reader who questioned whether outbursts from parents who found that their children had received corporal punishment were of any help in the upbringing of children.
Noor Azimah Rahim, who leads the Parent Action Group for Education, agreed that corporal punishment could damage the child.
She said children usually rebelled because they wanted attention.
“While caning may appear to be more convenient, it may have negative effects and the child can grow up to become abusive to his own children or even his spouse,” she said.
Meanwhile, National Parent Teacher Association Collaborative Council President Mohamad Ali Hasan disclosed that schools had strict guidelines on caning.
“Previously teachers used to cane their students in public, but now, if it is found that caning is called for, they have to be caned in private,” he said.
“Even when caning, there are restrictions such as not to cane a female student while she’s menstruating and never caning any child in the stomach or on the face.”