OneWorld.net (U.S.)

OneWorld.net's take: The death of an 11-year-old boy is drawing attention to corporal punishment in Egyptian schools, where numerous students have suffered damaging physical abuse in the classroom, according to a group that works with disadvantaged children in the Middle Eastern nation.

• School children in Alexandria, Egypt; 1999. © Ya Susanne (flickr)Although concerns remain regarding corporal punishment in schools, educational access in Egypt has improved significantly over the last years. Net primary school enrollment is roughly 95 percent and the country's youth literacy rate has climbed from 61 percent to 85 percent since 1990. However, resources have not kept pace with increasing numbers, and so the quality of state education is regarded as very poor and achieving the Millennium Development Goal for universal literacy is far from certain. Many households are unable to pay tuition fees and 3 million children, the majority of them girls, have either dropped out of school or never attended. Visit OneWorld UK's Egypt country guide for additional information on development and human rights in the country.

• The Egyptian Parliament passed a major children's rights bill in June that makes female genital cutting a crime punishable by fine or jail time and raises the legal age of marriage to 18, reports the children's rights group Coptic Orphans. The move came after the deaths of two girls who experienced complications related to the procedure. The bill also allows children born out of wedlock the right to health care and schooling.

Death of 11-year old Alexandria Boy Brings International Attention to Discipline in Egypt Schools

From: Coptic Orphans

October 29, 2008

A mathematics teacher in Alexandria is being detained on manslaughter charges in Egypt after allegedly beating an 11 year old student to death for not completing his homework. The teacher claimed that he only intended to discipline the boy, but the incident brings to international attention the larger problem of corporal punishment in the Egyptian school system.

The BBC reports that after using a ruler to punish him, the teacher is alleged to have taken the young boy outside the classroom and hit him violently in his stomach. The young pupil fainted and later died in hospital of heart failure. The teacher is reported by Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Alyoum to have told the prosecutor that he was only trying to ‘discipline the boy, not to kill him'.

Coptic Orphans has seen numerous cases of damaging corporal punishment in Egyptian schools. In January of 2007 we reported about what happened to Samira, a young girl from a rural area in Egypt. Beatings with a ruler from Samira's teacher left the tendons in her fingers ravaged and her fine motor abilities destroyed. Samira waves her hands in the air as if to shake something off when she talks about the ten lashings that her teacher often inflicted. "The tenth is always the worst, because the teacher hits the hardest of all."

Mina, another child who participated in the Not Alone program, received beatings from his teacher, who extorted him by physical punishment and lower exam grades with demands that Mina hire him for private tutoring. Mina courageously told his Coptic Orphans Rep, Nargis, of the abuse. Rep Nargis confronted the teacher without success, and then reported the teacher to the school administration, who opened an investigation. The police investigator who interviewed Mina after the case was surprised with Mina's rare initiative and courage. The investigator told Mina, "you are a brave child."

Coptic Orphans addresses physical abuse in schools in individual cases through the advocacy of local volunteer Reps like Mina's and through regional workshops that teach children and families how to stand up for their basic rights in Egypt.

But according to Coptic Orphans executive director Nermien Riad, effort in Egypt is needed to put teeth to the ban on corporal punishment in schools to re-enforce a new culture that refuses to tolerate child abuse in Egyptian society.

Coptic Orphans is an award-winning international Christian development organization that unlocks the God-given potential of disadvantaged children in Egypt, and so equips them to break the cycle of poverty and become change-makers in their communities. Since the founding of the organization in 1988, Coptic Orphans has touched the lives of over 14,000 children in Egypt.

To read more about children's rights in Egypt, visit Coptic Orphans.

Letter to the Editor

Re: Boy's Death Spotlights Egyptian School Abuse

An eleven year old boy in Alexandria, Egypt failed to do his homework. In a failed attempt to discipline him, his math teacher took him aside and hit him with a ruler. The child was hit violently in the stomach, and later died in a hospital. http://us.oneworld.net/article/358427-boys-death-spotlights-abuse-egypti...

As shocking as this story is, it really points to the need for reform in our schools on an international level. No educator should be in the business of child abuse. This could very well happen to any child in the world that allows teachers to use corporal punishment. After all, children in all classrooms of the world fail to do homework on occasion. Teachers have no training in the practice of hitting children, and although the intent may not be to injure or kill, it happens. How many more children will be abused in our schools before this barbaric practice ends?

Our licensed professional educators should not be in the business of modeling violence. For those who support corporal punishment, why is there no training on the "right way" to hit a child? I cannot think of a profession in the world that involves invasive techniques that does not require training and demonstrating competence in the performing of such techniques. As a registered nurse, I must be checked off on a multitude of simple skills on an annual basis to maintain my job, and demonstrate my competency. Who is monitoring the use of corporal punishment in our schools, and assuring that teachers are trained how to best strike children with wooden boards?

If there were a right way to hit a child with a wooden board, one would think that those who are trained to educate and teach would have the skill to teach each other how to do so. Perhaps it is time for the educated ones to admit defeat and realize that there is not a right way to abuse a child.

The death of this child in Egypt should serve as a huge wake up call to educators world wide. Corporal punishment has no place in our schools, and should be banned in all schools in every nation.

Peggy Dean, RN
Member, Board of Directors, PTAVE
Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education
www.nospank.net