Translated by: Manal Samhat
News…
A worker in the east of China beat his 11-year-old daughter to death, because she copied her classmate’s homework several times. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported, according to the police, that a man in the eastern Zhejiang province forced his 11-year-old daughter to kneel down, tied her hands and started beating her up until she stopped breathing. Later, she was transferred to the hospital where she passed away.
A report issued by the hospital revealed that the girl suffered from multiple fractures in the neck and back. Moreover, the police clarified that the father beat his daughter up after he found out that she has copied her homework from her classmate several times.
It is worth noting that corporal punishment as an educational method is common in China, especially in the rural regions where the parents build high hopes on their children’s academic achievements.
Last Tuesday, another Chinese man had attacked students in an elementary school with a knife, resulting in the injury of eight students one of which is in a critical condition.
Comment…
A few parents realize that beating children, insulting them and scolding them is not useful and it does not produce the aspired result. Sometimes, it might even surpass the size of the fault committed by the child, as mentioned in the news. This issue is considered as one of the most complicated issues at the level of the relation between the parents and children, for the parents do not realize that beating, scolding and humiliating the children, weaken their personality, destroy their self-esteem and create feelings of grudge, hatred and violence. This happens at a time the child-parents relationship should be based on love, understanding, trust, communication and dialogue, which calls for finding discipline methods others than beating, which are usually more efficient.
One day, someone asked His Eminence, the late Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah (ra) a question regarding the matter, and he answered as follows: “Parents or teachers resort to beating as a means of controlling the child due to their lack of patience, because they believe that beating is a short way to solve their problems with children. But beating might silence the child for a while, yet it might have negative impacts on his character, and he even might develop a feeling of suppression and fear on the one hand, and take a resentful stand from the person beating him, on the other hand…
To make the child feel persecuted by using violence against him is one of the forms of wronging the parents should avoid. We inspire this from the wonderful humanitarian idea expressed in the saying “wronging the weak is the most brutal kind of wronging”. Therefore we ought to respect the humanity of the child as part of respecting ours.
[Answer extracted from the book “Dunya At-Tuful” (World of Children)]