We banned corporal punishment but haven’t taught teachers what to replace it with
Daily Maverick | 12.06.2026 05:11
In a few weeks, thousands of student teachers will walk into South African classrooms for their teaching practicals and find themselves caught between two competing pressures related to discipline in the classroom: on the one hand, the well-established legal framework regarding their responsibilities towards children, and on the other, the normalisation of violence towards children in our society. These tensions frequently lead to profound ethical dilemmas which student teachers find themselves grappling with, often long after their return to university or college. How to manage these dilemmas is something that must be addressed in their training.
