Burials of the 16 girls who died in a dormitory fire at Utumishi Girls Academy, that was followed by a spate of school unrest and destruction of property, have reignited a familiar national debate.
Several Members of Parliament have called for the return of corporal punishment in schools, arguing that the abolition of caning has contributed to declining discipline in learning institutions.
Many adults in Kenya remember a time when teachers were feared, school rules were respected and authority was never questioned. The people running this country today, including teachers, civil servants and politicians, were educated in an era when corporal punishment was common.
The cane survives in the Kenyan imagination because it represents certainty in a rapidly changing world. It remains an enduring symbol of authority amid what many perceive as a collapsing social order.
Authority structures have been dramatically altered in ways previous generations could scarcely imagine, thanks to the advent of the digital age. A teacher is no longer a paragon of knowledge in a classroom disconnected from the outside world. Every student carries access to search engines, social media platforms and alternative sources of information. A teenager can challenge, mock, expose or mobilise against authority with nothing more than a smartphone.
Social media compounds the problem - it rewards rebellion, spectacle and performance. Schools are not alone in struggling to adapt. Governments, churches, political parties, workplaces and families are confronting the same crisis of authority.
The cane appears attractive because it promises an immediate restoration of order. But before embracing it, we should understand where it came from.
Abolished corporal punishment
African societies disciplined children. Physical punishment was not unknown. In many communities, beatings were administered to restore respect, enforce social norms or correct misconduct. The institutionalised cane, however, is largely a colonial inheritance. The British Empire ran on corporal violence. Soldiers were caned. Prisoners were flogged. Workers were subjected to physical abuse. Schoolchildren were beaten. Colonial schools were incorporated into a broader machinery designed to produce obedient subjects, and their successors happily came into this inheritance.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argued that modern institutions such as schools, prisons, barracks and factories share a common purpose: producing what he called ‘docile bodies’ — individuals trained to obey, conform and internalise authority.
Modern societies, he argued, gradually shifted away from spectacular punishment towards disciplinary institutions. Public executions and physical spectacles of punishment gave way to systems that regulated behaviour through surveillance, classification, examination and routine. Schools, prisons, barracks and factories all developed remarkably similar techniques of control.
Colonial Kenya imported these techniques together with the institutions that enforced them. The school was one component of a wider machinery of colonial authority. Those outside school could be sentenced to hard labour and corporal punishment. Inside school, the cane served a related function. It was at once an educational tool and the technology of power. Its purpose was to stop wrongdoing but also to manufacture long-lasting obedience.
It produced orderly subjects who respect hierarchy and comply with authority. This history matters because it helps to explain why the current debate is framed the way it is.
And when it was seen to fail, it was dialed up, resulting in some deaths and a lot of injuries. Kenya abolished corporal punishment because it increasingly conflicted with constitutional values of dignity, children’s rights and protection from degrading treatment. The challenge today is not how to revive an old instrument of authority.
School unrest has indeed become more frequent and more destructive. Teachers complain of declining respect for authority. Parents lament changing social values.
Young people are already navigating unprecedented levels of anxiety. They worry about examinations, fees, unemployment, economic uncertainty and an increasingly bleak future. Many contend with family breakdown, financial hardship and online pressures previous generations never encountered.
When these pressures erupt in destructive behaviour, resorting to the biblical injunction not to spare the rod lest the child spoil provides only the illusion of a solution.
The generations that built post-independence Kenya were educated under the cane. Many of those presiding over corruption scandals, governance failures and institutional decline were caned repeatedly.
Discipline is not the absence of punishment. It is the presence of accountability. Students should face consequences for misconduct. Teachers, too, deserve protection.
Obedience can be beaten into a person, but responsibility must be cultivated — painstakingly. Frightened children may become compliant. Compliance, however, should not be confused with character. An obedient citizen follows instructions; a responsible one exercises judgment. While the former asks how high he should jump, the latter will want to know why.
Democracies do not merely require citizens who obey. They need citizens capable of independent thought, moral reasoning and responsible participation in public life.
Countries that have moved away from corporal punishment have not abandoned discipline. They built new forms of authority that command legitimacy. We should try it.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. [email protected]
