"As president, I have the responsibility not only for my children but all children in the country to ensure that the responsibility of nationhood will be passed on to reliable custodians."
In November 2001 President Charles Taylor of the African nation Liberia gave his 13 year old daughter a public caning. She had been suspended from a very prestigious school for ill-discipline, and her father considered the suspension wasn't penalty enough. He forced his daughter to lie face down on a desk in front of her classmates and then administered 10 lashes with a cane.
The practise went against school policy, but President Taylor said he wanted to provide an example to parents and teachers. "As president, I have the responsibility not only for my children but all children in the country to ensure that the responsibility of nationhood will be passed on to reliable custodians." The President feels that the increasing wave of indiscipline in the country is the result of inadequate forms of punishment, such as caning.
He is opposed not only by the Principal of the prestigious school his daughter attends, but by child advocacy groups around the country. The groups rose during Liberia's civil war, in which children fought and were brutalised. They have called for an end to all violence against children.
Source: information reported by BBC World News, November 9, 2001.
Applications: children, discipline, parenting, corporal punishment, example.