NEWS of a young girl who was injured after being caned by her teachers was a heartbreaking thing to read (The Star, June 24; online at bit.ly/star_cane).A picture showing the horrifying scars on the girl assaulted this reader’s eyes with a sense of pain. I read that the mother scolded the people involved later.
This method of punishment is not something new. In educational culture, culprits who did something wrong were caned as a form of coercive management in order to ensure the implementation of good behaviour through extrinsic motivation.