Sangeetha is no sweet music for Vinodha English High School in Bangalore. A class VI student, Sangeetha was a victim of teachers’ atrocity. Now, the school has some unwelcome visitors — Karnataka State Commission for Women, the police, the press. The DDPI and the BEO too visited the school with a different agenda.

Let me narrate an incident, which my CEO once told me. He went to a school in Madhya Pradesh. As he entered a class, he saw two children standing outside — at the door.

Asked why they had not been let in, the teacher said: “They had been bunking the class for a week. So, as a punishment, they have been made to stand outside”. If this is the treatment one gets for coming to school, why should anybody attend it at.

Most of the teachers feel that punishment is part of the curricula and that they are empowered to wield the cane. In the process, they enjoy the tacit support of parents. It is only when things go out of control that the teachers’ moral authority to wield the cane is questioned.

Whatever be a student’s crime, punishment is not an answer. Was it that Sangeetha was at the receiving end of their cumulative frustration? Did they all collectively think that this was the only way to make Sangeetha not to skip her homework the next time?

The irony is that this incident took place just a few days after newspapers gave prominent coverage to the National Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights stipulating a code of regulation to teachers. One Kannada daily had even splashed it on page 1 — for a change an academic story.

One expected Sangeetha’s teachers to have read it and thus be aware of the changing times in the academic sector.

Either the teachers had not read newspapers or the suggested code of regulation made no impact on them. No wonder they made it to the headlines, but for the wrong reasons. Teachers who should have been a source of inspiration are looking like academic terrorists on the prowl.

A point to be noticed here is that such negative news mostly emanates only from private schools and yet there is a mad scramble for admission there! Maybe, in government schools the teachers are “absent” and so the cane is spared! But it is also a fact that private school teachers hardly get any on-job training.

Take job security. Unlike government school teachers, private school teachers are there only as long as they enjoy the patronage of the owner. Government school teachers get paid even if they do no work — a privilege that is denied to private school teachers. Again, private school teachers are under pressure from the management to deliver.

This is the stark reality with which most of the primary school teachers perform. This is not to justify the acts of hooliganism. But private school managements should also think of methods to empower their teachers with academic training.

It is not enough if the government grants recognition to a school. The recognition should also be linked to quality of teachers, an issue that should bother private managements as well.

Is the private school managements’ association that is fighting for recognition rights ready to take up this challenge equally seriously?