I Will Never Accept This!

This post is going to be a bit different from what my followers are used to, which is (lately) exhibitions, museums, art, photography and so on. It's going to be about an exhibition, but in a different way.

Most likely I'm not going to be popular after I publish this, even make a few enemies, but I'm not looking to win any popularity contest, I'm just expressing my opinion on a matter that is extremely important.

Last week I went to an exhibition, which was about reformed collages and the educational system in the past few centuries, in the last 400 years to be precise. This week I showed you how a classroom looked like and what props they were using in the 19th century, in this post. There will be other posts to show you another side of the educational system you may not know, but today I'd like to talk about how students were treated back in those days.

To give visitors context about what life was like for students in those days, there were these big boards where you could read all you needed to know.

To begin with, let me tell you that only the wealthy and privileged ones had the chance to study. Education was not free, tuition was quite expensive, so the well off, the wealthy and those who got sponsored by someone, got the chance to study, but even so, life was pretty difficult for them. Most of them were staying in boarding houses and had their daily tasks to carry out besides studying, like cleaning, carrying wood and so on. It's not the ideal life a student would dream of, but this wasn't the biggest issue.

There was a short video (5 minutes I think), to give you a glimpse into the life of these poor kids and the opportunity to see what they had to go through. There's a nice, hand carved wooden chest from 1758, don't miss it :) This chest was used for the financial documents of the collage.

I stood there, watching the video twice I believe and thinking of how life has changed since then, but not everywhere unfortunately.

Long story short, the story of this video is about one young boy who saw an older student stealing his friend's pocket watch, that he inherited from his father. He reported the theft, but the thief was smarter than him, hid the watch and poor kid had to face the music for false accusations.

The matter was settled at the end, but in a way you never want to see in life, let alone experience it. Yes, corporal punishment was the end of the story for this poor kid, who did the right thing after all. Unfortunately this was not an exaggerated story as that's how matters were resolved back in those days and corporal punishment was the way they educated kids.

At the time of writing, there's a scandal going on in my country, who's main character is a kindergarten teacher who was caught on tape yelling at kids, beating them with a ruler and threatening the kids with beatings. She's been arrested and going to have to face the court and could be sentenced as well.

It's shocking to know cases like this exist but this is reality. The sad thing is that it's possible she is not the only one treating kids like this.

What is more shocking is that this kind of treatment applied to kids is considered normal and necessary in some parts of the world. As a curator, I read a lot of posts on a daily bases and come across similar stories. I'm not going to name the countries where this behavior is not only tolerated but encouraged as well, most likely you can guess which ones I'm referring to.

What I don't understand and will probably never be able to understand is how these people still consider such behavior normal and necessary. Often I get into arguments with them as I'm not going to hide my indignation, nor say it is ok. After being subject of such bullying, shaming and physical abuse, as an adult, they still think it's ok, which most likely will lead to them doing the same thing with their kids.

The most shocking justification I've heard from them is that those beatings were out of love for the kids. I'm always wondering, if you beat your kids out of love, what do you do to your enemies? Absolute madness! Beating and abusing a child will only lead to hatred and will leave deep wounds that may never heal.

In most of the countries you can go to jail for such behavior and can lose custody of your children, but some parts of the world are lagging. I just hope civilization can evolve there too and save these kids from this kind of treatment. Abusing those who you should protect is the worst thing you can do! Making kids fear you won't bring any results.

Feel free to leave a comment, tell me what you think about the matter, or about how kids are treated in your country. Is corporal punishment still considered the best form of educating kids?

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