10 Good reasons NOT to beat children in Africa

Joel's painting, which formed part of his Children's Rights Gallery that was featured in the Bayimba Arts Festival in 2011

This blog is partly about giving a voice to children in Uganda and Africa and partly giving some exposure to our project, which is developing social entrepreneurs in Uganda, the Butterfly Project.  Beating of children is a very frequent topic of conversation amongst children, so I though it would be useful to summarise some of the conversations I have had over the last two years, which some may find illuminating.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child” is a common philosophy amongst people you meet round the world and the context of this is Proverbs 13 and 23.  Actually the original verse states  “He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes”, which could perhaps be viewed more figuratively, than it is commonly interpreted

However, recently reading “The Hole in Our Gospel”, one can see very clearly that the Bible is less about castigation and fear, more about caring for the oppressed and loving thy neighbour.

Many believe that caning works in schools in Africa as, I am told, “African children are different to European children.  From the conversations below, you can perhaps make a judgement as to how different or, in fact, whether they are any different to children anywhere in the world.

These comments are only from disadvantaged children, who live either in slum districts or in rural village areas.

1. Peter, who is 12 and a member of the Butterfly Project, said to me recently, when I asked him about caning said “I guess I don’t mind it, if I have done something, but I really dislike it, if I have done nothing wrong.”  Peter is highlighting unfairness here and how caning will reinforce power of evil against good.  This boy is caring, ethical and considerate and there would be no instance, where he would need violent disciplining and I imagine that most of us know children for whom this type of discipline would be crushing.  It is no different in Africa.  Caning supports unfairness.
2. Samuel, who was 14 at the time, said to me one day “Ben, I was caned today, because I attended the Butterfly session, instead of going to extra Saturday school.  I tried to tell the teacher, but he would not stop and listen to what I was telling him.”  This is reinforcing that big people do not need to listen to small people.  A begrudging apology from the Head Teacher, who had been informed of our session, came far too late. Caning discourages children from speaking up.
3. Samuel also said how being caned affected him.  “I can’t concentrate for the rest of the day after being caned” he said.  “I don’t think they understand the effect that caning has on children.”  Many teachers cane as a “learned” behaviour.  Once learned, it becomes automatic, whenever they are stressed.  Samuel admits that for some children it makes no difference, but for him caning hurts more than physically, but is this not teaching children that individuality is unimportant?  Caning has thus become a panacea for all discipline issues, regardless of the child and thus teaches that violence is the solution to everything.
4. Winnie, who is now 16, is a spirited young girl with a lot of talents.  She laughed to me one day.  “I cannot believe one of our teachers” she says.  “He is mad.  He canes in almost every class he takes.  He enjoys doing it and the pupils dread going to his Year 2 class.  When I spoke to the Headmaster about it, as I was representing the school year, he said that it is important to have some teachers that represent discipline in a school.”  Caning obliges psychosis and causes violence, by stoking it in some people.
5. Brian is 11 and for whatever reason refused to be caned.  Whenever it was threatened, he ran away and this caused him for some part of his life to become more of a street kid, sleeping out and collecting scrap etc.  Nowadays, he is a wonderful young computer trainer who has started to perform to his capability in his school, who we chose as a school that did not rely on caning for discipline.  Caning causes fear and fear can lead to failure in children.  The number of children who run away in Africa is very high.
6. Ronald is also 11 and one day he came to me saying that he can been caned, because his mother could not afford two toilet rolls, which he was told had to be brought into school.  Ronald’s father died a while back and his mother relies on making Acholi beads for her income.  His older brothers are unemployed.  Ronald is industrious and collects scrap and sells paraffin to pay for his food and is very entrepreneurial.  Needless to say I gave him two toilet rolls for next day.  There is something warped which says that children should be punished for their poverty.  Caning is teaching children that it is right to punish those who are less fortunate.
7. Philip is 15 and has written a play about what he calls “overbeating in schools”.  He goes to Migadde High School, one of the most prestigious schools in Uganda and he often speaks of how the school seem to be obsessed over results.  “If I don’t reach a target of 65% at school in a particular subject, I will be caned and also risk having to repeat the year, which my mother will be even more unhappy about.”  Philip is also perceptive about the impact of the embarrassment that caning causes, when he discusses the fear of ignorance in his blog “The Giraffe and the Sour Grapes.”  Caning is causing children to fear being viewed as ignorant, which leads to them being less able to accept modernisation and international issues.
8. Nyeko is 14 and a member of Butterfly North.  He is now attending a local school, while living at the Chrysalis Centre and told me that they would be caned, if they did not bring money for some new textbooks today.  Nyeko is a clever and self-confident boy, with a desire to create a better Uganda and to fight corruption and eliminate AIDS.  However, when I suggested that he tell the teachers that this was illegal in Uganda, he could not.  He felt disempowered, saying “They will expel me from the school, if I say that.”  Perhaps this is true, but it is very clear that caning is being utilised specifically to disempower, not empower students in school.
9. Alfred is also 16 and is a good leader of his peers, as captain of the Running Club.  He’s also very bright and told me that “I’ve never missed a year at school – it’s really very easy”.  He even appeared in one of Gilbert’s films “We Need Your Attention”, a film about children largely ignored by their parents.   However, Alfred lives in a life, where violence is commonplace.  While he has both parents contributing to the family, he seems to live in a chaos brought about by the threat of violence.  Earlier this year, I discovered that the local head teacher has been beating him with a barbed wire fence post for failing to pay for computer lessons.  Clearly, punishment needs to fit a crime and this form of violent caning is teaching the opposite.
10. Lastly, a story about Brian again, who is an orphan from Northern Uganda that we have supported these past two years.  A friend of mine who heard about his history, wanted to send him a present for his birthday.  It was a pencil sharpener, which was a London red bus.  The impact on Brian a receiving this present was enormous and maybe for the first time, he had felt to be a special person.  He wanted to show it to his friends at school, despite my warnings that it would be broken or stolen and, in fact, it was stolen and we discovered the thief.  When I took the issue to the school, the teacher told me that “nothing could be done, as it was up to the child to bring back the stolen item.”  That same day, the whole class had been caned for talking during class.  So, children are taught that stealing is less important than insubordination.

These stories are not exceptional in any way.  These things are happening in almost every school in Uganda every day and, one might presume many countries in Africa.  One can understand the challenges of schools – huge class sizes, lack of fees being paid, more feral children and these are all mitigating factors that are important to consider.  However, none of these take away from the facts that caning is causing an enormous negative impact to society in Uganda and elsewhere.

Fear plays a major part in children’s lives and I have noticed this leads to children developing a culture of lying.  I can think of many situations where children will know that you are aware that they have done something wrong, but, rather than admit to the truth and in their minds submit to caning, they will stay silent or tell a lie.  Instead of rewarding children for telling the truth, then the culture is for them to be punished and this I believe is institutionalising this corruption culture, where lies trip off the tongue so easily.

The law in Uganda states categorically that caning is not legal, yet there are never any prosecutions and one can only presume that it exists either to placate overseas funders or is some residue from colonial rule that was never implemented.

A conspiracy theorist might suggest that a government is perpetuating this strategy in schools as a means to subjugate their population and discourage speaking out against injustice and this is probably not true.  Whether it is true or not, caning is a barrier to the inspiration of change, instead inspiring a violent society and it suppresses the power of education to create changemakers.

So, why do we not speak up about it, when it is such a crucial and fundamental children’s rights issue?

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School Sponsorship Slavery Exploitation

Even private schools need sponsors to support those children that are the most disadvantaged

Most of the world we live in these days is about how people with money exploit those without and my recent read of the “Hole in our Gospel” made illuminating reading, when Rich Stearns stated how the gap between rich countries has moved from 6 times richer to 75 times richer over the last 100 years.  I’m going to quote from his book in forthcoming blogs, but in its simplest terms Rich, who was the CEO of World Vision, is stating how the bible talks more about poverty in its pages than anything else.  The mere fact that we let ourselves become richer while others became poorer is a testament to the fact that Christians have ignored the main thrust of the gospels – “Love Thy Neighbour” – and our world is full of exploitation as a result.

I discovered recently another exploitation in Uganda, which I feel is relevant to anyone sponsoring children into school anywhere around the world, as I am guessing that what is happening in Uganda is happening too in other countries.

99% of children in Uganda are school-focused.  It is the main interesting thing that children have to do in their lives and in general parents will try to make money available for at least one of their children to go to school, all, if they can afford it.  Some parents cannot afford school or choose not to pay and then children become outcasts.  They have nothing to do and spend the time on the streets or they are exploited by their parents as labour for the fields, depending upon where they are located.  Children at school poke fun at children not at school and animosity and shame and other negative issues occur.

In Uganda, there are also people that are rich, just as described in Rich’s book, but over the last few weeks I have discovered that school fees is being used as leverage for what can only be described as slavery, at best servitude.  One young man I know, who is sixteen and top of his class is someone that deserves to be at school.  He is the youngest in his year and has been the top of the class every year during his senior school.  His father died four years ago and, unknown to me, someone stepped in to pay for his school fees, about £80/term three times a year.  That person owns a very large farm and the young man has been labouring on his farm during this last holiday, to pay back the person who has been supporting him through schooling.  I guess that’s allright but what is not allright is that he has been required to work 16 hours per day.  He is sixteen and has been required to move 100kg bags of maize for all of this period.  Now, because I have been advising him to stand up for himself and refuse to do the work, his phone has been taken away, so that it does not accept incoming calls.  The young man has been told that he will be working for the person sponsored and that other options are not available to him.  The carrot was the free school fees, but there was no altruism in the offer, just exploitation.  I want to help this boy, but I feel that serious action needs to be taken now to extract him from this insidious work.

Another recent call I had was to a young woman of a similar age.  She has been offered sponsorship by a Ugandan woman, but she fears taking it on, as she believes rightly or wrongly that the sponsorship is simply a way to get a free housemaid and that she would be prevented from leaving the house and carrying on a normal life.  I suspect that girls all around Uganda are accepting the carrot of free fees, but are then stung by the exploitation.

Lastly, a slightly older boy that I met has finished four years of senior school.  Matthew was bright and capable, but had no means to pay his fees.  He decided to pretend he had the fees and lied to the school, saying that he would pay and they believed him right up until the end.  While clearly he should not have lied, children should not be put into a position by their parents to lie.  Samuel, one of our Butterfly members, who has had an impoverished upbringing and has no sponsor is in a similar position.  He has said that he knows he should not lie, but when there is no money available and will never have any money for school, then what option does he have, if he wishes to go to school?  Samuel is a high integrity person on the Butterfly Project – Universal Primary Education is supposed to spare him this.

So, back to Matthew, who was about 18.  When the school heard he had not the money for fees, they contacted the Police and the Police chased after him.  He confided in a local businessman, who ran a large business in Kampala and this man said that he could help and that he would give Matthew a job.  If he worked for eighteen months for him, then he would pay his school fee bill.  The businessman said he would pay for his transport, medical bills and food – essentially look after him – while he was working, so the young man agreed.

What actually happened was very different.  Matthew did the work for eighteen months, to the best of his ability.  He was not paid, he was not clothed or fed and he became very ill and became starved.  Nor was the school fee bill paid.  Actually, the young man, who has enormous promise as a radio presenter, almost died through the neglect.  Now, after he came to us he returned to the school and is working for free in a shop selling alcohol to pay the school bill, but there is no obvious end point.  My guess is that he will be there until he finds the money to pay the school….

Generally, if people sponsor from outside, either directly to a school or through a respected organisation, then you can be more certain that your money is paying for an education, but you should be aware that the schild you sponsor will not know whether you have paid your sponsorship and that the potential for them to be exploited is high.

As Rich Stearns says in his book, there is little more important than sponsoring children in developing countries.  In some cases, you will pay for education but in others you will prevent a child from entering a life of indenture or servitude too.

Remote Rural Ugandan Kids back in Kampala for a Changemaking School Year

Butterfly North back at the Chrysalis Centre

2012 has been a year of exciting developments so far and, thanks to Start Some Good and a number of new sponsors, we have been once again able to run the Butterfly North Programme, a project that takes children from remote rural Kitgum and Lamwo districts in Uganda to day school in Kampala, so that they can utilise their after school time and holidays to train as a social entrepreneur.

The unique programme teaches Ethics, Problem-solving, International Ciizenship and Activism, alongside specialist skills rarely taught in schools – practical ICT, leadership and project management, entrepreneurship, transparency in accountability, farming to alleviate poverty and how to tackle corruption, through integrity and social enterprise.  We are interested in practical teaching, so members learn by actually implementing social projects, not just on the blackboard.

We aim for our members to be catalysts of change in their home communities, galvanising local people to take action to create change, by showing them ways that this has happened around the world.  At the same time, we insist that they are, as children, empowered, not subjugated, developing their capabilities during school and at the same time developing friends where they school that they can empower similarly.

While in Kampala, the Butterfly North members live at the Chrysalis Centre, a building, which is the Centre for activities for children in the nearby Acholi Quarter slum district.  Children come to do drama, art, sports, ICT and much more.  These slum-based children generally have little to do either in holidays or after school, so the Butterfly North members can learn to lead them, while at the same time the children can raise their aspirations from their lives as rubbish-pickers and paraffin-sellers.

Entrepreneurship is also key to what we offer and this year we are running businesses in poultry-rearing with local children.  The money earned will go to those participating children, so they can buy their requirements for school.

During their holidays, the members have been working with their local rural children and last year we supported a programme in Namokora sub-county in Kitgum district, where our members run the same programmes that they have been running under the auspices of the Chrysalis Centre.

This year, I hope blog readers will become familiar with the remote rural Butterfly members at the Chrysalis Centre – Morrish (16), Nancy (15), Nyeko (14) and Francis (16) – and if you have ideas for them, or even would like to Skype with them to discuss their lives and how they might elicit positive change in their communities, then the opportunity is there, while they are at the Chrysalis Centre.  They all speak and understand good English, so language should not be a barrier.

More blogs are coming soon, so if you want to keep in touch with what we are doing, you can follow us on Twitter or on Facebook