Minister says training needed for alternative to corporal punishment

Patrick Faber

At Monday’s press conference held by the Belize National Teachers Union (B.N.T.U.), corporal punishment was one of the various contentious issues raised by the union. Minister of Education Patrick Faber has asserted that teachers are still practicing corporal punishment within the classroom and has demanded that they comply with the rules. The union agrees that teachers should follow the rules, but they in return demand that educators be given training in alternative methods of discipline. There seems to be a compromise within reach of both their positions, since today Faber told News Five that training is the answer.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“I think the president of the B.N.T.U. in his presentation answered himself. The alternative to corporal punishment is training for our teachers and that is what we had always said. I listened as the president said that we are waiting to amend the rules or bring in the new rules to start training and I don’t understand where he is going with that. In fact, you remember when the act was actually passed in the national assembly and signed into law, we held back on the section dealing with corporal punishment for six months over which time, all our continuous professional development workshops were geared towards giving strategies. And of course these strategies are also imparted in the training sessions over the Cert-Ed for the associate degree program; the bachelor’s in education program that the various teacher training institutions. The answer my friend and anybody else who has a role to play, has a stake to play is training. And I make the examples time and time again. If you have a teacher who cannot recognize that he is acting up because he may have some learning disorder, if you have a teacher who may not be able to look at a child’s situation and think there is something else going on apart from him acting up. Maybe some problem at home and we are not willing to check into the homes. If you have teachers who don’t implement routine and rules within their classrooms, they are going to have problems with behavior and they are going to feel frustrated and feel that they have to hit children. But if we have teachers who are trained to recognize how children learn; that they can have potential difficulties; that there are things that they can do in order to help to correct the behavior of this children, you won’t feel the need so much to have corporal punishment be there. And I say to the teachers you know and I say to everybody else….if they want to prove me wrong and say that training is not the answer. Then let’s get the training and see if you still can’t handle the children and then I will be the first to go back on what I am saying now. But until then, I think we are at I think fifty-four percent trained teachers at the primary school level. Let’s get it up higher and you will see that you will be less dependent on corporal punishment and you won’t be asking what next, what next, what next…or what is it being replaced by.”