Sparing the rod, apparently, is not a policy in the Caribbean as UN studies find rampant child abuse.

Disturbing new data released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveal that Caribbean children and teenagers under 18 suffer daily physical or psychological abuse, mainly from their parents. To compound the problem, a high percentage of Caribbean adults believe that the abuse they dish out to their children is a normal means of education and socialisation.

Surveys in several Caribbean countries conclude that a high percentage of adults – as high as 80% or more in some territories – consider it natural to resort to maltreatment, including physical punishment, to impose discipline on their children.

The unsettling data is included in the article ‘Child Abuse: A Painful Reality Behind Closed Doors,’ published in the ECLAC and UNICEF bulletin Challenges No. 9, which examines the progress made in attaining the Millennium Development Goals with regard to children and adolescents.

According to the authors of the study, psychologist Soledad Larrain and sociologist Carolina Bascunan, both of UNICEF, the main risk factor that perpetuates domestic violence against children is the fact that the mothers or fathers also suffered similar experience during childhood. “This is called the phenomenon of inter-generational transmission of violence,” the article said.

Larrain and Bascunan further explained that violence is understood as the intentional use of force or physical power, real or threatened, causing, or having high probabilities of causing injury, death, psychological damage, development disorders or deprivation.

Despite efforts made by Governments and NGOs in almost all Caribbean territories, the region has yet to develop an effective response against child abuse. The article lists the main difficulty in doing so as “the lack of information on its real dimension and nature, especially when it occurs within the home, because it is not usually reported, and when it is, only a fraction of the cases are actually punished by law.”

Experts recommend giving priority to prevention and early intervention with the assistance of all institutions dealing with minors, and the collection of precise and reliable data as important first steps to effectively combat child abuse.

In Trinidad and Tobago, there has been focus on setting up a children’s authority to deal with abuse.

Many NGOs have been calling for this as they set up homes to deal with disadvantaged children.

Corporal punishment has been outlawed in schools since the early 1960s: ironically, this policy has been partly blamed for the indiscipline among secondary school students.

For example, when people speak about ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ I could read for myself and I could tell you that you wouldn’t find that particular quote anywhere in the book they say they are citing it from: the Bible. As a matter of fact it is a man by the name of Samuel Butler who wrote that in one of his highly satirical and sexualized poems, since 1662! Read with me an excerpt from the poem Hudibras:

“If matrimony and hangings go
By dest’ny, why not whipping too?
What med’cine else can cure the fits
Of lovers when they lose their wits?
Love is a boy by poets styl’d
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.”

The scenario here is one where Sir Hudibras is ‘imprisoned’ by a widow whom he had been wooing. They have discussed the possibility of matrimony. She offers to free him but only if he would consent to a flagellation or whipping like the ones suitors of that time would endure for their ladies. The woman is a bloody dominatrix, you can’t see that! To those who may be fond of such liaisons, I apologise about the way I have described the overzealous widow, but you can plainly see that this phrase has to do with rearing and disciplining children!

It is generally argued that this ‘rod of correction’ is figurative, and addresses discipline as a whole which is similar to saying ‘the long arm of the law’ which isn’t really an arm but a measurement of the extent of the law’s reach. But let’s for a few moments take everything King Solomon said literally. He was a wise man who loved a lot of women and became husband of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. Jehovah was not the only god that King Solomon worshipped and received ‘wisdom’ from. He “did evil in the sight of God” and worshipped at least three other ‘foreign gods’ whom his wives introduced him to.

Ashtoreth was a Semitic goddess of love and fertility. Chemosh may have been her mate and a god of war known as the destroyer, subduer, or fish-god. Young children were offered in sacrifice to Molech whose image had the head of an ox, and outstretched human arms. The children were placed in its arms to be slowly burned, while to prevent the parents from hearing the dying cries, the sacrificing priests beat drums.

It has been shown here that youth floggings involve deep subconscious drives, both sexual impulses (Ashtoreth) and violent impulses (Chemosh, Molech). At this point, I insist on indicating that if the supporters of beating are still not slightly aware of the sexual factors at work in the beating system it is as a result of obligated ignorance or of sexual repression, or both at the same time.

Perhaps the story of Solomon’s sons carries the real message of what happens to children when they are beaten with rods. The people of the kingdom came to Rehoboam after his father’s death and said, “your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labour and the heavy yoke he put on us and we will serve you.” (II Chronicles 10:4). The brothers insulted their father’s memory by telling him to say to the people, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.” (II Chronicles 10:10-11). Rehoboam continued, “My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”

I assure you that the cup which I just held over your mouth and asked that you take a sip was none other than the world’s best non-alcoholic wine. But, don’t swallow just yet, research and read for yourself!

President Max Richards is seen as a hip Head of State.

Playing mas’ with “Tribe”; spraying abeer at Phagwa celebrations; knocking back cocktails at many a function.

He expressed his misapprehensions when he spoke at a cocktail reception to mark the Queen’s Royal College Old Boys’ Association 75th anniversary at the All Saints Church Hall on Monday night.

Professor Richards said:

“Nowadays, people hardly speak to one another and some of us, like many of our children, are losing, if we have not already lost, the art of communication.

“Why is this ladies and gentlemen? Sadly, it is, in large measure, due to modern technology, that is to say the internet and the mobile telephone.

“Am I against modern technology? Certainly not! But I cannot help but notice that some things which signify progress are in fact eroding the standards and strengths of which we could boast in earlier times.

“Such is the case with language, written and spoken, from the point of view of both content and presentation. There is the language of the internet and of the cellular phone, the latter even permitting predetermined text, which the uninitiated may find very challenging….”

He lamented the tendency by parents to be “more and more permissive of their children’s behaviour in every aspect. Doing whatever they wish, enables them to eschew social interaction, in every aspect.”

According to the President children and youths are hardly “communicating vertically” with interaction confined to their peers.

He noted, however, that one of the things that had survived in schools is the house system which he felt was a means of supporting vertical communication.

He said that this was necessary ”if cohesion among the age groups is to survive.”

Professor Richards who attended QRC in the 1940s praised the Association for “the steadfastness of its members” and pointed out that the school’s “promotion of critical thinking and the passion for excellence, inter alia, persists and the success of the college is manifest in the impact that its alumni have made and continue to make on the nation.”

Hart Edwards, the Association’s president, indicated that it intended to broaden its role and will be reviewing its constitution this year.

At the Interfaith Service, Brother Noble Khan, representing the Muslim faith, called for debates among secondary schools in remembrance of the titantic debates Dr Eric Williams and Dom Basil Matthews held in the Public Library on Aristotle in 1955.

The QRC Old Boys Association was founded in March 23, 1934 by Sir Hugh Wooding, Sir Courtenay Hannays, C. G. Grant, Hamel Wells, Dr F. L. Patrick and Dr. E.H. Farrell.

Eye surgeon/economist Dr Arthur Hutton McShine was the Association’s first president.

Editor’s note: update corrects the typo changing “initiated” to “uninitiated” in the 10th paragaph.