COLONIAL SCARS: Florence Laast Traces Ghana’s Corporal Punishment Culture to Colonial-Era Discipline

What if the way Ghanaian parents discipline their children today has something to do with how their grandparents were treated during colonial rule?

It is a question Mrs Florence Laast, founder of St Martin de Porres School, has been reflecting on and her answer offers a different perspective on Ghana’s long-standing culture of corporal punishment.

For generations, many Ghanaian parents have believed that a child must feel pain to learn a lesson. A slap, a cane or another form of physical punishment has often been defended as necessary to correct wrongdoing and prevent children from repeating their mistakes.

But Mrs Laast is beginning to question where that belief came from, suggesting that Ghana’s experience under British colonial rule may have helped shape the country’s understanding of discipline, authority and obedience.

Speaking in an interview with Kafui Dey, she recalled how colonial officials commanded respect and expected their instructions to be followed, with little room for disobedience.

“Everything is order, order, and if you don’t do that, you are punished,” she said, describing the atmosphere of authority she associated with colonial administration.

For Mrs Laast, the memory goes beyond the orders themselves. It is also about how ordinary Ghanaians responded to those in power and what that relationship may have taught subsequent generations about raising children.

She recalled seeing parents stand with their hands behind their backs as white officials issued instructions in offices.

It was an image of unquestioned authority: one person gave an order, and the other was expected to obey.

Disobedience, in that environment, could attract punishment. And over time, Mrs Last wondered whether the same expectation of unquestioning obedience had found its way into Ghanaian homes, where parents became the unquestioned authorities and children were expected to comply.

“We probably thought that this is how to nurture our children,” she said.

Her reflection raises an uncomfortable question: could a method of discipline that many parents consider traditional have been reinforced by a colonial culture in which authority was exercised through commands and punishment?

Mrs Laast did not suggest that British colonial rule was the sole reason corporal punishment became common in Ghana. Rather, she offered a personal interpretation of how attitudes towards authority may have been passed down through generations, eventually becoming part of the way some parents understand discipline.

And that is where her argument takes a more personal turn.

Mrs Laast understands why some people believe physical punishment is necessary to correct a child. She recalled the thinking that, without the experience of pain, a child might fail to understand the seriousness of wrongdoing and could return to the same behaviour.

“We felt that when you don’t let the child feel pain, you wouldn’t be able to correct him properly and that he will go back to doing it,” she recalled.

But this is an approach she has come to question.

For her, the real purpose of discipline should be to change a child’s behaviour, not simply to make the child suffer for doing something wrong. The assumption that pain is necessary for correction, she suggests, deserves closer examination.