Childcare At Its Best

October 16, 2008
I’m in class with grade 6 as they are doing some work on their own (we hope). The silence is broken by a child’s cry from next door. The teacher probably has a stick and smacked the 4th grader on the hand with it for being naughty.
“Is that what you want me to do to you?” Choruses of yes called out.
“Are you sure? Remember the time I sent you to the principal for not doing your homework? You weren’t very happy after that.” After taking a census of grade 6 only 1 child wants to get whacked but she seemed to feel silly when she saw that she was the only one raising her hand.
Then another cry came from next door- dag, it hasn’t even been 10 minutes. At this point the bell rang (it’s rung by hand) and it was time to rotate classes. As I’m standing in the doorway and the students are moving across the yard there’s still wailing coming from grade 4 and the kids are craning their necks to see. I pop into the principal’s office and quickly tell him what’s going on. He says he’ll bring it up with the teacher later. I replied, “Sure just hope the kid doesn’t get beaten to death before that. This is illegal in this country.” Then I went back to the learners lined up in front of my room. As they were filing in I saw the grade 4 teacher walking across the yard to the principal’s office.

October 17, 2008
I kept a kid after school today. He may have missed lunch at the hostel because of it. I really wasn’t sure what to do about that so when I got home I asked my host mom what she would do.
“Oh I never do that because I just don’t like it.”
Yes, making him go hungry was not the intention. Now that it has possibly happened, what do you think I should do?
“Well I think we’re going to look at crime and punishment at Monday’s staff meeting.”
Okay, but what about right now?
She started telling about some other incident and punishments that had nothing to do with what I’d asked. As I walked away I thought, wait a minute, last year this time when I was visiting for the 1st time I saw you lock a kid in your classroom either at tea break or lunch break.
It’s a banner week for childcare here at O%&^*@.