THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WRITE to compliment the Roman Catholic Education Board in Kingston on its policy statement on corporal punishment in schools, reported in the Catholic Opinion supplied with the Sunday Gleaner Outlook magazine, June 25.
Two questions come to mind, however, particularly in view of the eminently sensible justification given in the policy statement for its opposition to the use of physical force for purposes of punishment.
First, we must wonder why it has taken so long for such a policy to be enunciated, when the arguments supporting it have been well known for decades. I cannot believe that it is only since the 2004 UNICEF report and the legislation of the past two years relating to child care and early childhood institutions that our policy-making educators have discovered the undesirable consequences of flogging children at school.
We must also ask, therefore, how long it will be before our Ministry of Education and Youth sees it fit to extend the prohibition of corporal punishment at the early childhood level to the primary and secondary level schools which it also supervises.
I am etc.,
PETER MAXWELL
P.O. Box 237
Kingston 7
