It was his birthday. But eight-year-old Yasin, admitted to a madrasha only a few months back, with his kind of family background could not have the luxury of celebrating the day by cutting a birthday cake at the residential accommodation of his educational institution. Yet his mother paid a visit to the madrasha carrying with her some food she specially cooked for her son. Instead of cake, the boy asked for biscuits from her mother and trailed behind when she attempted to leave him on her way home.
The eight-year-old's insistence on getting biscuits and following her mother behind were enough to infuriate his teacher moulana Yahya who grabbed the boy by the neck and dragged him into a room before starting lashing with a stick mercilessly. The man unleashed his full fury with all his physical might. A birthday was turned into a nightmare for the little one. The video of the torture, no wonder, went viral and shocked and pained all who saw it. Moulana Yahya seems to have been an incarnation on a mini scale of his infamous namesake Gen. Yahya of Pakistan, whose face could not be caricatured more aptly than did venerable artist Kamrul Hasan.
This madrasha teacher has presented a likewise loathsome face not because he is ugly but because of his deed. Not only is the man in charge of teaching students like Yasin but also a custodian at the residential accommodation. What was the boy's fault? It is quite natural that a boy so young and admitted only recently to the hostel feel emotional when his mother comes to visit him. Unless compelled, no parents send such a young boy to hostels, least of all to a madrasha dormitory. There are chilling stories of torture on hostel inmates. On Saturday, there are two reports in a Bangla contemporary on alleged sexual abuse of a boy by his teacher and arrest of students and a teacher on charge of murdering a student respectively.
Corporal punishment has been banned in all educational institutions in this country way back in 2011. But law is one thing and mental backwardness is a completely different issue. Stories of cruelty to students by teachers of schools make screaming headlines from time to time with Madrashas leading the pack. What was prevalent in time of Charles Dickens in the public schools of England is very much the order of the day in madrashas. Setting Nusrat, a senior girl student of a madrasha, on fire by the goons of her madrasha principal on her refusal to give in to the man's sexual advances last year only bring to the fore the ugly environment prevailing in some of the madrashas in the country.
When they are habituated to committing such horrendous crimes, how the perpetrators view corporal punishment is anybody's guess. Caning and physically assaulting students for the slightest mistakes they consider their preserve. Never have they learnt themselves that unless students pursue their studies with love, they do not learn enough to assimilate knowledge. True teachers are those who harbour affection in their bosom for their students. Fear and intimidation have no place in teaching. Unless teachers are scholars who not only know their subjects thoroughly but also can read the minds of young learners, teaching becomes a struggle. Only then do they become irate and inflict cruelty on students.
So the primary criterion is to create a generation of teachers who can appreciate their service and teach students with love and affection. Law cannot make a horse out of a donkey. It is time the entire gamut of teaching business at the school and madrasha level were reviewed and 10 years' plan divided into five equal phases taken up for moulding new batches of teachers with fresh outlooks and views.