From Donkeys to Heroes

As soon as I stepped in the classroom I could sense my students were abnormally happy. Either I had gotten chalk all over my butt, I thought, or they were about to get me with some practical joke (maybe they had rubbed the cow-itch plant all over the piece of old mattress we use as an eraser). I thought they had finally realized how powerless I would be if they all turned against me, the soft teacher who doesn’t beat kids, my thin façade of control breaking down. I asked them what had gotten into them, and (as usual), 40 heads turned down to their desks and after a good 30 seconds one kid raised his hand. “The rains are near,” he mumbled. That was a relief! I should never have doubted these incredible kids. As we waited for some students to bring us some bamboo rods for the days lesson I gave an impromptu speech about Alaska—I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that here nobody bats an eyelash when I say that’s where I’m from, but these kids were a captive audience so I babbled on and on. Even as it started to rain and the bamboo arrived, the kids managed to pay decent attention to the task of building an A-frame. I love these kids who seem a different species from some of the monsters I tried to teach in the States or Mexico.

Just after the lesson, two men came up the hill toward the school leading two children whose hands had been shackled with heavy rusty chains and secured with a giant lock. I recognized one of them as a kid from my environmental club who had skipped the session. They must have stolen a bunch of chickens (a high crime in our town) or were caught with marijuana, I thought. The grandfather of one of the kids addressed the teachers. “These children were caught skipping school and playing cards!” he announced. The reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped. I was a little hurt that the kids would rather do this than attend my club meeting (which usually involves a game or competition), but the shackles on these docile children seemed as necessary as harnessing a dead dog. I left at this point, only to hear the beating stick echoing from the school grounds, and to see an excited mob run onto my land after one of the boys and drag him back to the school by the hands and feet.

You might feel outraged at how I could just stand back and let this happen. But what I know about the system is that it is going to be a long slow transition. More than just a shift from corporal punishment, it will take a shift from people viewing children as pack animals whose wild spirits must be broken, to fostering respect for them. We are taking minute steps.

The headmaster at the primary school is transformed every Tuesday and Thursday when we teach 1/3 of the 6th grade class “Hero Books.” These are books that should help the students pick out goals and figure out what the obstacles are to getting there. They should also help them psychologically to realize who they can go to for help. The headmaster, usually feared by the children, reminds me of Beauty’s Beast as he tames his natural tendency to intimidate the kids, and calls for mutual respect. I explained to him that I think children need to learn out of a desire to reach goals, and earn praise from others, rather than the fear of being beaten so it hurts to sit on the hard school benches. I think most of the teachers agree in principle, but behavior change is very tough to bring about.

A 20-year-old villager told me that until he was in the 5th grade, he would run off with his friends and gamble with whatever they could find—100 shillings, a piece of sugarcane, an egg. One day he was caught, and the headmaster gave him the maximum beating allowed. He said he is so glad, as ever since that day he turned into a studious and diligent student, often coming home from vacations from boarding school and locking himself in his room to study for 16 hours a day. He was the top student in his class all four years of high school, and from my view is on his way to being the most educated person in the village. There goes my theory out the door.