To punish or not to punish

I was enlightened in a most unusual way the other day. I was helping my 11-year-old nephew with his homework and discovered that the young ones these days are practically getting away with ‘murder’.
Going through his work books, I noticed he had on several occasions, skipped doing some of his work. I did notice, however, that the teacher had gone on to mark the other pages which he had completed and did not give much thought to the work he had not finished.
On investigating further, I discovered that the teacher apparently did not punish students who did not finish their homework; neither did she try to contact the parents to let them know what their child was up to in school – no phone calls, no notes, and no invitations to have a parent-teacher chat.
Maybe my nephew gets away with such things because on the whole, he’s a very bright student and always does well in his exams or maybe the teacher is afraid in general of dealing with over-protective parents.
When I queried my sister about this, she said that the teachers in her son’s school have an attitude of “It’s up to the students whether they want to finish their work or not”.
I’m not saying that all teachers are like that but when parents have a tough time getting their children to do their work, they harbour a hope that a stern teacher would be able to instil some fear in the kids.
Now, things were absolutely different when I was in school. Woe betides the kid who did not finish his homework. Each incomplete work meant punishment and it would vary from a stroke of cane on the palm of your hand, a pinch on the forearm, standing up on the chair/table throughout the entire period, picking up rubbish during break time, not being allowed to go out during recess, a point demerit, having to stay back after school to clean the board and sweep the floor or simply a sound scolding that would leave us on the verge of tears.
And if that was not enough, habitual offenders would have the pleasure of having their parents notified and this meant another punishment when we got home.
I have fond memories of school and the whole package deal that came with it, and no, I did not escape punishment either, but it helped me become a better person – a more disciplined person. Rather than have to stand on the chair (which can be quite embarrassing when you are in the upper form), we preferred to finish our work on time and even helped each other because we did not want to see any of our friends being punished either.
We also learnt to behave ourselves when there was no teacher around because all the students in a noisy class were punished even if were only one or two who were misbehaving.
Those were the days when you could see an entire class doing laps around the field in the hot blazing sun or gawk at an entire class standing on chairs.
But did these punishments turn us into bitter persons who walked around with guns and blew people away? Did it make us vengeful and slash the teachers’ car tires or did we go around painting graffiti on the walls? Did it leave us emotionally unstable or have a dire effect on us psychologically? No, it did not. In fact, a majority of my classmates ended up as teachers, nurses and social workers. Most of us ended up in the care-giving profession. Why did this happen? It is because we believed in, and were thankful for, the discipline that we received from those teachers who cared enough to punish us. We learnt what caring was all about even if we had to learn it the hard and painful way.
So maybe before we decide whether or not to punish our kids, we should look back at our childhood and see the person that we have become today and then we can ask ourselves – to punish or not to punish?