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Teachers in schools and parents in homes use punishment as one of the most important tool for controlling student’s behavior and discipline. Form the psychological point of view, punishment is defined to as anything that decreases the occurrence of a behavior; physical pain, withdraw of attention, loss of tangibles or activities, a reprimand or even something others would find rewarding, but the particular individual does not like. One of the main goals of punishment is to invoke fear in the student, so that the behavior does not occur again. In the school, teachers punish students for being late to school, for not following the school rules, for not doing classroom assignment and for failure to perform better in tests and examinations and the like. The kind of punishment given in response to these behaviors includes, caning the child, giving them physical labour such as watering school gardens, farming, kneeling on concrete stones, walking on knees , doing push-ups in the sun and carrying several buckets of sand. School is not the only place where children get punished. At home they are also beaten by their parents when they do not go to school, stealing and the like. Children at home are punished by their parents through food denial, burning hands with fire for stealing and being chased away from home to go to sleep in the bush. Despite the fact that, punishment seems to be an appropriate technique to control behavior and student disciplines, the UN Convention on the Right of the Child recognized that, corporal punishment employed by teachers and parents in schools and homes seems to be ineffective, dangerous and unacceptable method of discipline as it brings negative rather than positive impacts to learners. Due to these impacts, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declared corporal punishment to be banned. The Article 28 (2) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the child (1989) states the need to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner that is consistent with the child human dignity and in conformity with this Convention. Thus, severe punishment in this regard is acknowledged to be beyond violation of the fundamental rights to the child as it may cause pain, injury, humiliation, anxiety and anger that could have long term psychological effects. There are two main types of punishment, the positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment refers to the punishment which decreases the probability of behavior recurring by administering aversive stimulus. In this kind of punishment the occurrence of behavior is followed by the presentation of an aversive stimulus and as a result the behavior is less likely to occur in the future. An example of positive punishment is slapping. On the other hand, negative punishment refers to the punishment which decreases the probability of behavior to occur by removing a pleasurable stimulus. That means, the occurrence of behavior is followed by the removal of a reinforcing stimulus and as a result the behavior is less likely to occur in the future. An example of negative punishment is when a teacher removes a child from the class because she/he is misbehaving or when a parent forbids a child to watch a television when he/she gets poor grade in the school. Different people like teachers, parents and other educators have different views regarding to the punishment. There are those who support and those who oppose the use of punishment particularly corporal punishment. Those who support the use of punishment believe that if children are not punished, they will develop into unmanageable and uncontrollable citizens. In the large classrooms for example, punishment is seen by teachers as proper way to deal with discipline when they find it difficulty in maintaining silence and instructions. People who oppose the use of corporal punishment view the harmful effects of punishment (physical punishment) as not only lasting in childhood, but often well into adult hood. They also believe that, punishment de-humanizes the children, violates children’s right to equal protection under the law and have negative rather than positive consequences to children. They generally believe that, punishment makes children worthless, scared and ashamed, increase child aggression, increase antisocial behavior, lower intellectual achievements and it can lead into mental health problems. Punishment creates fear to students especially during teaching and learning processes. Children learn simply to please the teacher and not to acquire skills and knowledge for their own development. Physical punishment influenced by fear distorts a student’s motivation to learn. Students who are physically and emotionally abused develop anxiety that causes loss of concentration and poor learning. A student receiving the punishment associates the fear not only with undesirable behavior, but also with the person who administer it or with the situation in which it occurs. The teacher who enforces corporal punishment enables the student to loose interests to the subject and come to have negative feelings against the teacher as well as the classes that the teacher handles; hence the student ends up getting low grades.
