At a meeting with the Hai Phong City authorities, Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, head teacher of the 2A8 Class of Quan Toan Primary School burst into crying, begging for a chance to apologise and an opportunity to correct her behavior.

Prof Le Nguyen Phuong

However, the images posted on social networks days before showing the teacher repeatedly shouting and giving students slaps in the class will never be forgotten.

Prior to that, a teacher at the To Hieu Secondary School in Hanoi forced a student to kneel as a punishment for his wrong behavior.

Some teachers, who were found beating students in class, explained that they lost temper in anger. They believed that corporal punishment was a necessity to educate naughty students.

However, Phuong pointed out that corporal punishment violates human dignity and is truly ineffective in education.

Corporal punishment is understood as the intentional application of types of punishment that causes physical pain as a way to change people’s behaviors.

Not only causing trauma to children, corporal punishment also has negative impact on children’s psychophysiology which can lead to an increase in anti-social behaviors as well as aggressiveness among children.

It harms relations between family and school, between teachers and students.

And finally, by using corporal punishment teachers send a wrong message to students that problems need to be solved by violence, and that those people with weaker power will have to comply with commands from more powerful ones.

Phuong stressed that corporal punishment won’t bring the effects the punishment users want, because this won’t help correct the wrong behaviors of students and children.

Meanwhile, the study by a group of professors at the University of Toronto found that students bearing corporal punishment in school are often inferior to others in intellectual functions such as planning or abstract thinking.

The educators from Hanoi University of Education have also voiced their protests against the use of corporal punishment in education.

Vu Thu Huong, a renowned psychologist, said corporation punishment will only bring negative impacts. Punishments will help students correct their behaviors, but children’s bodies must be respected.

Regarding the kneeling penalty, Huong said the punishment was commonly used tens of years ago, and teachers were educated with the method,.

The education ministry once drafted a regulation that teachers will be fined VND20-30 million if they beat and scold at students.

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