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Corporal Punishment

 

Although the Vietnamese laws made it clear about the restriction on all forms of corporal punishment for children, the enforcement of these regulations has still been a big challenge. One of the problems is that the long-standing influences of Confucianism in Vietnam and the popular saying as "Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child" becomes a strong belief in most people. For the adults, that is an excuse they use quite often and for the children, they accept it as a natural matter.

Another challenge is also the closed boundaries of the issue. People normally do not react to physical punishment as they believe that is a way of education domestically within the family.

There are facts that the problem happened with some kind of ignorance by the community as people consider corporal punishment as an educational tool. The law can only be enforced when people raise their voices and prosecute the abusers.

A high number of children claimed that they had been abused verbally and physically. At school children were often punished and abused openly in front of others, one form of abuse which a lot of children disapproved. The main causes were disobedience to parents or teachers, laziness in studying and fighting. Among the punishment styles, scolding proved to be the most popular accounting for 64.9% of cases and corporal punishment came next, 25.6%. Amazingly, 77% said that punishment was moderate to them whilst only 3.9% considered it extremely serious. When these kids suffered from punishment, 58,4% looked for sympathy from their close friends, 20% from grandparents and only 7.6% from mothers; 4.2% from fathers and 1.8% from teachers. 45% said that they were victims of an injustice.