Rod of correction

No licks?
In an age of increasingly unruly children – and not just boys – the United Nations’ push for Guyana to abolish corporal punishment for children in the family and in schools is going to raise a lot of hackles. The Ministry of Education (MoH) has already held some ‘consultations’ in various locales in the country on the issue – and were told in no uncertain terms by irate parents: “No way, Jose!!”
It didn’t help matters that in addition to advocating “no licks for any child”, the ministry was defending its “no child left behind” policy. That just convinced parents that the authorities were actively pushing the end of civilised life. While not all of them might have read Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” – which describes the inevitable fall into anarchy when a group of shipwrecked boys had no elders to enforce order – they obviously had hands-on experience with its message.
They knew that, beneath a very thin veneer of externally imposed discipline, there lurked, in their little darlings, multitudes of disorder. In our neck of the woods, shaped as it is by the biblical wisdom: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame”, the ministry was asking for a revolution in thinking about child rearing.
And as we said, the evidence around them didn’t encourage experimentation when the older parents compared their own sedate school environments – created by the philosophy of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ – to the rampant disorder that abounds today. Read the report of the South Ruimveldt High School recently? The UN, via the MoH, is assuring parents that children can be disciplined without resort to physical punishment.
While all parents agree that corporal punishment has a downside, they are adamantly unpersuaded that they outweigh the dangers posed by the ‘no licks’ road. When those parents look at the jurisdictions – such as huge swaths of the U.S. that have abandoned corporal punishment in their schools – they see a direct correlation with rampant indiscipline.
The problem with the proponents of the UN’s view is that they refuse to admit their position. It is also based on a particular view of human nature. They are convinced that children (and all humans, ultimately) are ‘rational’ beings that can be convinced through just rational argument. Sadly, while obviously there are exceptions, history does not support such optimism.
Once we weed out sadistic teachers, some condign corporal punishment can achieve wonders.
Chavez’s decline
It is obvious that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is very possibly fatally ill. While we were somewhat sceptical in the early days of his presidency, for all his bombastic domestic rhetoric, Chavez was very much a moderate on the question of Venezuela’s pretensions towards our Essequibo.
For this stance alone, which earned him the ire of his right-wing opponents – he deserves our well wishes for a recovery. Guyanese should be reminded that it was a prior aggressive Venezuelan president who nixed our previous attempt at energy independence in the 1970s. Loan offers dried up when Venezuela raised its claims. It is doubtful that the Amaila Falls Hydro-Electric Project would have proceeded as far as it has if Chavez had rattled Venezuelan sabres.
Then, of course, there’s the Petrocaribe oil credit facility that has allowed us to deal with the volatile oil markets.
Last but not least, we have to admit that key to the buoyant rice production has been the Venezuelan purchases arranged by Chavez and then President Bharrat Jagdeo.
So let’s keep our fingers crossed for a full recovery of the Venezuelan president. Even a successor from his party might bend to domestic pressures on the border issue.