Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection Sashi Kiran has denounced the call from the Fiji Teachers Association to bring back corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure for students with deteriorating behaviour.
While making a strong stand on this issue, Kiran says beating a child in school will not solve the deteriorating discipline of students, but will cause more problems.
She says if corporal punishment is reintroduced, we will be teaching children that violence is a way to solve conflict.
She adds that Fiji already has a substance abuse problem and asks if we want to exacerbate it more.
The Minister says rather than incorporating corporal punishment, we should find the root cause of why they are misbehaving and where they learn this type of behaviour.
Kiran also highlighted that we got to this point because the last administration removed counsellors and value teachings from school, but the Ministry has returned these services.
She also says teachers should be given the tools of behaviour management to assist them in controlling the indiscipline of students.
The Minister also revealed that five out of six children in Fiji have suffered violence in their own families.
She says the Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey by the Bureau of Statistics indicates that 80 percent of our children between the ages of 1 to 14 years experience violent discipline, which includes physical punishment.
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