Some comments on the Childcare abuse video: A personal experience

Introduction

This morning a CCTV video went viral on Facebook. The video depicted what appears to be a Childcare teacher abusing one of her students in Singapore. The caption on the video stated that the child has suffered a hairline crack on his shin from this incident and that a police report has been made. This video has resulted in a lot of anger from Netizens and an explosion of discourse on Childcare services, education, and the extent of punishment the perpetrator deserves. 

Watching this video evoked some memories for me and I hope to share them here, together with my thoughts on some of the reactions by the public. 

My Experience with Teacher abuse

When I was in Primary 4, I was talking in class when the teacher-in-charge was not around. A teacher who taught Mandarin walked by the classroom and heard the noise. She came in, pulled my ear, and told the class to stop talking. The teacher used her nails when she pulled my ear, which left a small wound on my ear lobe that bled for the rest of the day. When my parents noticed the wound at home, they decided to make a police report and bring the case up to the principal of the school. Subsequently I received an official apology from the teacher in front of my parents and the principal. 

However, the teacher had only apologized cosmetically and had remained angry at being made responsible for her act. When I got back to class the next day, all of my teachers spoke about this incident as a 'teaching point' where, many a time, I was pointed out to have spread 'rumors' about the teacher involved. This lasted for the whole year. I recall that the worst case of open admonishment I received was when an aged music teacher told me sarcastically, during music class that if I did not like what she was saying, I should go make a similar complain about her. After all, she claims, I could make up any facts along the way.

My fellow students began shunting me and taking sides on the incident. Taking sides, however, is a kind way to describe the students full agreement with the teachers. After all, students at that age had few significant others with teachers being one of them. 

As a child, I actually felt bad that I told on the teacher. Hence, I hid these instances from my parents when I got home. At the same time, I was angry that teachers were being dishonest and unfair. Needless to say, Primary 4 wasn't my favorite year in the six years I spent in Primary school.

Some thoughts on the issue of Childcare Teacher abuse

I felt that it was necessary to tell my story because some of the comments that were made by the netizens had skirted around one very important issue, which is the culpability of the fellow teachers who had witnessed the incident. 

If we can take reference from the Stanford Prison Experiment, we will see that teachers, acting as 'guardians', acquire a different understanding and interpretation of the situation as does the students and the Netizens watching the video. If I may speculate from what I've heard and seen from my friends who are teachers, teachers often feel that the students require discipline, punishment, and a sense of fear of the teacher. Students are commonly described as lacking restraint resulting in unruly and 'naughty' behavior. This creates an Us vs Them binary, which emerges in the way teachers commonly speak of 'uncooperative parents', as if there is a need to take sides between the child and the teacher. 

Despite its similarities, most of us are unaware that a classroom is a model of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For instance, Scapegoating, which led me to having a bloodied ear lobe, is a common strategy to silence the class. It is also a common strategy used by the 'guards' in the Stanford Prison Experiment. At the root of scapegoating is the idea of the 'prisoner's dilemma', where students are told that if they continue talking and ignoring the teacher, the same circumstance could happen to them. Thus, even though the teacher is, in fact, unable to restrain every student in the same way, the fear of being picked out leads the class to become silent. 

What is important in approaching the classroom from the Stanford Prison Experiment perspective, is that it provides us with an understanding that the teachers form a closed community of 'elite guards' who are overlooking 'unruly prisoners'. Hence, the pressure of the in-group will cause teachers to overlook each other's method of disciplining students by chalking it up to frustration, 'style', and necessity. What is frightful about the Stanford Prison Experiment and what we saw in the CCTV video is that even in what appears to be severe corporal punishment by a teacher in the video, there is little reaction from the other teachers. The students/prisoners are, in effect, defined to be less than human in the situation.

Significantly, a form of Stockholm syndrome occurs as the students (being young) perceive the teachers as the first significant other and authority figure outside of their immediate family. This results in the child reacting to teachers the same way that they react to parents, which sometimes lead to Freudian slips where children refer to teachers as "mama or papa". This has two significant consequences, first, students take the same liberties with teachers as they do with parents since they do not properly differentiate the two. This would often increase the perception by the teacher that the student is unruly, rather than forming a similar emotional connection between the child and the teacher. Second, students will often feel a need to lie and hide their wounds from their parents, in order to protect their teachers from 'punishment'. Because of these two factors, the emotional trauma of being beaten by a significant other and having to protect the perpetrator, is in my opinion, far more extensive than what has been reported. 

Moving on from here

Whatever the eventual verdict of this incident may be, I think that it is more important for us to build upon this moment of collective consciousness on an issue that has been long overlooked, and that issue is with Corporal Punishment. 

I think that it is necessary for the Ministry of Education to state categorically that there is no room for corporal punishment within the education system. Children, being at a tender age, are required to have a sense of security about their own bodies instead of being constantly at risk of suffering bodily pain. The effect of course is not just physical, but as I have stated above, emotional and psychological too. Moreover, the categorical prevention of corporal punishment would also result in enforceable culpability for teachers who would (due to the circumstances described above) be otherwise unwilling to report their peers. 

I would also propose that teachers become retrained in recognition of the social-psychological circumstances that define their workplace. In doing so, they can move away from the siege/guardian mentality that forms a binary between the child and the teacher.

The Teachers that do make a difference

That being said, let us also give credit to the teachers who have done an excellent job thus far. I will like to believe that even though there are systematic conditions leading to a tendency to perpetrate and conceal abusive behavior, there are also many teachers who have transcended these conditions to become excellent educators.

For instances, when I was in Secondary school, I met a wonderful literature teacher. During one of his lessons, he asked what our aspirations for our GCE 'O' levels were. When I said that I hoped to get an A1 for literature, the class broke out in laughter. I had, after all, almost failed out of the Science stream that I was in the year before. This teacher chose to hush the class and spoke passionately about the need to aspire towards worthy goals, however difficult it may seem. He then took efforts to help me with my work, which led me to acquire the seemingly elusive A1 for my GCE 'O' Levels. 

Literature has since become an essential part of my life throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate years. I wish to end this post, by extending my utmost gratitude to this teacher, and the many others who have gone the extra mile to make a difference in the lives of young men and women.