From Caribbean360

CASTRIES, St.Lucia, Friday August 15, 2014, CMC – St Lucia’s Education Minister Robert Lewis has denied that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is pressuring the country to get rid of corporal punishment in schools.

According to the Lewis,while his ministry is looking into the matter of corporal punishment, a decision must be made in consultation with the St Lucia Teachers Union (SLTU), the National Principals Association (NPA) and parents.

The Education Minister told reporters after Thursday’s sitting of Parliament that it would be difficult to get some people to “buy into” the idea of scrapping corporal punishment since it has been part of the education system for so long.

Nevertheless Lewis felt that UNICEF’s move to create “Child-friendly Schools” in the Eastern Caribbean was “a legitimate request.”

“I want to make it clear that I was a teacher for twenty-two years and I have never bought into the idea of corporal punishment,” the Education Minister said, adding that he was not “particularly an adherent of corporal punishment.”

He noted that in some instances corporal punishment has been administered in rage, resulting in the abuse of children.

With support from UNICEF and their ministries of education, countries in the Eastern Caribbean have begun applying the concept of “Child-Friendly Schools”, where children and adolescents learn and develop the knowledge, skills and abilities for life in a healthy, safe, inclusive, protective and respectful environment.

The initiative, underway since 2007, is centered on the introduction of alternatives to the practice of corporal punishment.

Last month UNICEF’s Caribbean representative Khin-Sandi Lwin told reporters here that corporal punishment puts children on a path to greater violence.

UNICEF believes in order to legally ban all forms of violence against children, including violent discipline, countries must explicitly prohibit the practice and also eliminate any provisions that allow its continued use.

IMAGE: ST LUCIA’S EDUCATION MINISTER ROBERT LEWIS (FILE PHOTO)

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