The practice of corporal punishment in disciplining students in SMK Sungai Tapang and SMK Datuk Peter Mojuntin / Dorena Anita Seli and Teresa Lemba Ruddie

Corporal punishment is commonly practice as a disciplinary method in disciplining the children and it also may lead to physical and emotional pains to the children. This is the reason the United Nation Child Fund (UNICEF) wish to abolish the corporal punishment in Malaysia. However, some of the professionals disagree with the idea to ban corporal punishment due to limited number of schools’ counselors. In year 2017, there were 402 secondary schools in Malaysia listed as the hot-spots with disciplinary problems (Category 1) and drug issues (Category 3). However, none of school in Sabah being listed, while in Sarawak, there were eight (8) schools out of nine (9) were listed under Category 1, while the other one was under Category 3. Therefore, this strongly stated that Malaysia was not ready to outlaw the corporal punishment due to discipline problems. Besides, some schools in oversea showed that the discipline cases increased after the government banned the practice of corporal punishment in schools. There are two territories in this study that cover two secondary schools which are SMK Sg. Tapang (Sarawak) and SMK Datuk Peter Mojuntin (Sabah). Based on statistics in 2016, there were 95,046 of secondary schools’ students that involved in disciplinary problems. This study also covers form one until form five students. The study was using quantitative methods as a way to collect data where a minimum of thirty (30) questionnaires being distributed to respondents in April 2018 for each school. This study was intended to study the influences of corporal punishment towards the students’ discipline. The findings showed that corporal punishment gave positive impacts on students’ behavior as well as attitude. The respondents of the schools especially SMK Datuk Peter Mojuntin were disagreed if government of Malaysia ban corporal punishment. This is because the discipline of students were better when corporal punishment being practiced in schools. Therefore, in order to maintain the discipline of the students in schools, corporal punishment should not be abolished. This can be seen by comparing the discipline of students in Sarawak and Sabah where none of the schools in Sabah being listed as schools with discipline problem as compared to Sarawak. It can be concluded that corporal punishment plays important role in controlling students from misbehavior.