Educational institutions have to recognise the malady of harsh discipline and remedy the wrong in a different manner so that the lives of young souls would be saved, the High Court of Karnataka has said.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna made these observations while refusing to quash the cognisance of offence taken by a magistrate court in Kodagu against the principal, the warden, and the director of a private school in Gonikoppa for allegedly abetting the suicide of a 15-year-old boy, a IX standard student.
Stating that the documents submitted to the court by the school authorities were generated after the death of the boy or were farther from the truth, the court said: “the falsity noted is not in thin air but on the strength of document, and therefore it is not a case where there is neither instigation nor provocation. It is the case which has both, albeit, prima facie.”
Interfering with the magistrate’s order would amount to putting premium on all acts of the school without making them to face the trial, the High Court said.
Discipline is always of two kinds — positive or negative. The positive discipline would be in the form of motivating the student and the negative was the other way around. It was in public domain that harsh discipline was closely linked to internalising mental problem of a child and lowering the child’s cognitive functioning and school performance, the court pointed out.
“A child may be a troublemaker, mischievous, or otherwise. Punitive disciplinary actions like suspensions and expulsions would sometime in no way help the child get over the aforesaid traits; it would only result in fading away all learning habits of the child and cause great hardship to those families.
“Therefore, the schools which are inculcating harsh discipline, should think of paradigm shift, so that the lives of young souls, who do not have the capacity to think of the consequences of any action sometimes may lead to devastating steps like the one found in the case. Such cases would form illustrations of negative self-evaluation and the children feeling bad about themselves,” the court observed.
“The institutions should also recognise that the age-old principles have now changed. I mean spare the rod and spoil the child has metamorphosed into spare the rod and teach the child,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.
It was alleged in the complaint that boy was denied entry to the school following misbehaviour, including bringing alcohol in water bottle on the instructions of another boy. The school had also not intimated several aspects of the boy to his parents before denying him permission, only orally, to enter school. The school had not acted against another boy who had instigated the victim boy to bring alcohol. The school had tried to paint the boy as suffering from psychological disorders after the registration of the complaint as an afterthought to overcome prosecution.
As the police did not take any action on the complaint, the boy’s father moved the magistrate court, which ordered investigation by the police, who filed the ‘B’ report. However, the magistrate who found that police did not conduct investigation properly, rejected the ‘B’ report and took cognisance of offence.
