Reports of an alleged assault involving at Forest Primary School in Kiminini have brought back memories that many of us would rather leave buried in our childhoods. It takes us back to those dreadful staffrooms which served more like panel-beating chambers. For me and I suspect for many of us, the staffroom was never merely a room where teachers prepared lessons, marked exercise books and discussed the business of educating children. It was more like a teachers-only club, a territory where students were unwelcome intruders and daring to walk in uninvited amounted to trespassing on sacred ground. Woe unto you if you had a reputation for poor grades.
There was however one exception to the prohibition against entering this hallowed territory, a summon, “Go wait for me in the staffroom”, a terrifying declaration of an impending beating. Such summons would almost always make the body begin its own private rebellion. Your heart raced, your palms became damp, a strange discomfort settled in your stomach, your bowels tightened, and your legs suddenly felt heavier than they had moments earlier. You walked towards the staffroom rehearsing possible explanations, searching your memory for whatever offense might have drawn the attention of an adult who held the power to hurt you. With every step, your anxiety grew. By the time you entered, you were no longer thinking about correction or discipline. You were hoping to get through the ordeal without being seriously hurt.
It is difficult to reconcile this childhood experience with what a staffroom is supposed to represent. In principle, it should be an extension of the classroom’s promise, a place where teachers plan how to reach struggling learners, discuss how to encourage the withdrawn child, find ways to support the pupil falling behind and reflect on their responsibility to shape young minds. It should be a sanctuary of professional reflection, where those entrusted with children’s welfare prepare themselves to discharge that responsibility with patience, compassion and wisdom. Yet, for many of us, the staffroom became the very place from which we needed protection, a profoundly tragic contradiction. A contradiction because discipline was not always about correcting a child or helping them understand the consequences of their actions, it was a grotesque performance of power. In some schools, discipline became a demonstration of authority rather than an opportunity to guide a child. Teachers who used particularly harsh punishment could acquire reputations for being feared, and pupils could be sent to them when other disciplinary measures were considered insufficient.
It was almost as if those educators’ thought students were possessed by a spirit of indiscipline and the staffroom was their hallowed ground for exorcism. Once inside, the students had to be delivered by whatever means necessary, correcting a pupil was akin to performing a ritual of purification and every blow was intended to drive mischief out of the pupil. When the ordeal was over, you were expected to emerge cleansed of your supposed transgressions, thank your tormentor (such an absurd burden of gratitude for having been abused) for the deliverance and return to class as though you had just attended a spiritual revival rather than survived an assault.
But this reflection is not merely about individual teachers who were excessively harsh and is also not about condemning an entire generation of educators who have worked with genuine dedication or even insinuate that every encounter in every staffroom was abusive. Truth be said, many educators carried and continue to carry enormous responsibilities with limited resources and work under difficult conditions. They maintained order and discipline without cruelty and offered compassion where children desperately needed it. The deeper problem is the institutional culture that can allow unchecked authority, weak accountability and inadequate child-protection safeguards to persist. Where complaints are ignored, reporting mechanisms are ineffective or perpetrators are not held accountable, violence can be normalized as discipline.
We have countless accounts of teachers who changed lives, who stayed after school to help struggling pupils, who bought exercise books for children whose parents could not afford them and who became second parents to generations of learners. Those stories deserve to be told and celebrated. But there is another archive, one that exists largely in the memories of former pupils. It is an archive of abuse, mass beatings, bruised bodies, public humiliation, threats, arbitrary punishment and the peculiar silence that descends upon a child who has been hurt by someone they have been taught to respect. It is an archive of children who returned to class wiping their tears, straightening their uniforms and pretending that nothing had happened. Part of the problem was how we came to understand discipline as a top-down relationship of blind obedience premised on the assumption that authority is inherently right and therefore beyond challenge.
A student questioning a teacher was not necessarily exercising critical thought, they were being disrespectful. This culture of unquestionable authority has implications beyond corporal punishment. Many parents still find it difficult to challenge school decisions or seek explanations about matters affecting their children’s welfare. Questions about additional charges, school routines, access to examinations or delays in informing parents that a child is unwell should be addressed transparently and respectfully. These concerns are not all equivalent to abuse, but they point to the importance of accountability in institutions entrusted with children’s education and well-being. We cannot comfortably ask why lunch money is a prerequisite for sitting examinations whose fees have already been paid separately. We hesitate to question the rationale behind so-called teacher motivation fees or remedial fees imposed on parents. We wonder why seven-year-olds must wake up at four in the morning to make it to school or why a school would take three weeks to inform a parent that their child is unwell. Reports about Donnah Makena’s alleged assault raise serious questions about how schools respond when children speak up, challenge decisions or seek explanations from those in authority. The circumstances of the reported incident must be established, but the broader principle is clear: no child should face violence or intimidation for asking questions or raising a concern.
We may have graduated from fearing the staffroom as children to navigating the school administration as adults, without ever fully dismantling the culture that made questioning authority feel like an offence. We have grown older, but in some respects, the relationship between those who exercise institutional power and those expected to submit to it has hardly changed. The question is whether we are prepared to challenge that culture, not merely for our own sake, but for the children whose welfare must never be subordinate to an institution’s unwillingness to explain itself. Parents and students alike should not have to approach legitimate questions as though they are challenging an untouchable authority. Schools are not doing parents a favor by educating their children, they are discharging a profound responsibility that demands transparency, professionalism and accountability.
A question we must contend with is what happens when children grow up believing that the violence they experienced was necessary because everyone around them insists that it made them who they are? We hear it often enough. We were beaten and look at us now, we survived, went to university, built careers and became responsible adults. We trivialize the abuse with casual laughter perhaps because humor is the only language we have learned to use when speaking about it. Some of us laugh about these experiences because they happened long ago, because we believe everyone went through the same thing, or because acknowledging how frightened and vulnerable we were as children is difficult. Others may have come to accept violence as an ordinary part of growing up. But the fact that we survived, or that we have since built successful lives, does not mean the violence was justified. Perhaps the successes we have achieved in adulthood have softened the edges of those childhood traumas.
Every once in a while, we run into our abusers who often assume a pretentious meek demeanor, eager to remind us of the supposed role they played in our success. “Nilikusaidia sana, hizo viboko ndizo zimefanya utoboe.” And we, out of politeness, social conditioning, or perhaps an unwillingness to reopen old wounds, play along, “Mwalimu, ulinisaidia sana, wacha nikununulie chai” One can only imagine the satisfaction with which some of them receive such praise. We exchange pleasantries and walk away, perhaps out of politeness, social conditioning or unwillingness to reopen old wounds. But our gratitude can be interpreted as confirmation that their methods worked. Our achievements can be interpreted as vindication, and our silence as validation. When stories of success are used to defend corporal punishment, they reinforce the dangerous belief that pain is a necessary price for achievement. This can help sustain a culture in which violence is excused rather than challenged.
In this way, we can unintentionally help perpetuate the cycle of abuse we have spent years learning to live with. When we present our achievements as proof that corporal punishment worked, we risk reinforcing the belief that violence is a necessary part of raising successful children. But our achievements do not vindicate those who hurt us. They are ours, and they do not erase the harm we experience. This brings us back to Donnah Makena. The reports surrounding her alleged assault should prompt serious questions about how schools protect children, respond to complaints and hold those responsible for violence accountable. One incident cannot establish the character of an entire school system, but it can force us to confront questions that have remained unanswered for too long. We must rethink what it means to educate a child. Education cannot be reduced to the transmission of knowledge, the enforcement of rules or the production of examination results. It must also be about the experience of being a child in an environment where adults possess immense power over you. It must be about what is correction and what is abuse.
Every so often, a story like the report surrounding Donnah Makena’s alleged assault pulls us back into the past. Suddenly, we are no longer the adults we have struggled so hard to become. We are children again, standing outside the staffroom, hearts pounding, stomachs churning, rehearsing explanations for an offence we may not even have committed.
Danford Momanyi is the Technology and Human Rights Intern and writes in his personal capacity.