Child Abuse

an article and an excerpt from my email conversation with a friend:

WEST AFRICA: Children in danger: Battered and bruised

Me: "My neighbor is an elementary school teacher who I have come to respect very much for his mentality and goodheartedness, he is highly supportive of his students and boasts an 85 percent pass rate with other teachers at 50 or less. He was showing me his elementary notebooks that date back before independence and explaining that students' quality of handwriting had gone way down with the outlawing of corporal punishment in schools. He continued that africans need the cane, otherwise nothing gets done, homework and studying purely dont happen without it. My reaction was that there is a motivational problem, that both students dont get or dont see any benefits from going to school or doing homework, and this would be another reason why most just go to Coranic school in my village."