When my elder daughter was a KG student, most often she would come home with a complaint against the teachers. I considered the complaints an expression of the ire of a truant student. When she began to say that she was often and again caned by the mathematics teacher or the EVS teacher (Yes, it is environmental science. The children are not allowed to see the environment, but they are taught EVS!) I let the Principal know in writing that I did not agree with corporal punishment meted out to children, in general, and I particularly asked to exempt my child from mental harassment and corporal punishment. And I warned the Principal that if any teacher caned my daughter again, I would not send her to the school in future.

I did not need to wait for long. One day she came home crying and told me that she was chided and caned for not knowing the opposite of carnivorous.

A hardly five-year-old child was punished mentally and physically for not learning the antonym of carnivorous!

I met the Principal and asked to call the EVS teacher. “Madam,” I asked the teacher when she came, “At what age have you been able to know the meanings of carnivorous and herbivorous?”

The Principal interfered: “But you have sent your child here not to learn the meaning of the words at the age when the teachers learnt them.”......Read More

Source: The Hindu