Released yesterday ahead of the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse tomorrow and the International Day for the Rights of the Child on Monday, the study's findings suggest that there is a critical need for "serious and continuing intervention" in the problem.

Despite Ministry of Education rules forbidding corporal or any other form of violent punishment, such punishment still happens, said lead researcher Assistant Professor Sombat Tapanya of Chiang Mai University's Department of Psychiatry.

Hitting students with open palms, fists, clothes and blunt objects, kicking, applying heated materials and even slaps to the face were among the "incredible" methods of punishments used by certain teachers, he said.

Some teachers even admitted to wielding weapons such as a gun or knife to threaten students, or punishing them by locking them in a dark room, Sombat said.

The information was drawn from responses to a questionnaire sent to about 1,300 teachers in both primary and high schools in all regions of the country.

Sombat said the most common forms of mental violence teachers used against students included shouting at them or, on the other hand, isolating them socially by ignoring or not talking to them at all.

The other forms of mental violence were embarrassing students in front of their schoolmates, reprimands and threats of expulsion, he said.

"These cause even deeper scars [in children's minds] than marks from being hit with the rod," said Sombat. Up to 60 per cent of the teachers surveyed said they strongly believed that corporal punishment was the right method to make students toe the line.

Sombat said the study's results reflected only a part of the violence going on in schools as the respondents would naturally tend to tell part of the truth when answering the questionnaire.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg, really," said Dr Choochai Suphawongsa of the National Health Foundation, which funded the research.

An associated study conducted by the same Chiang Mai University research team found that students also suffered violence, both physical and mental, from school-mates.

Surveying about 3,000 students across the country, the study indicated that verbal harassment and racist acts were the two most common forms of violence found among students.

In an effort to solve the problem of violence by teachers, Sombat said he had launched a number of pilot projects that focus on helping teachers to foster discipline among students in a non-violent and positive way.

Other pilot projects aimed at stopping violence among students are under way in Chiang Mai.

A study in the US found that 20 per cent of violent children became criminals as adults, said Sombat.

Arthit Khwankhom

The Nation