Even after its banning, corporal punishment is still being used in some schools and for a new generation of teachers they need to learn to exert discipline in classrooms without the use of the rod.

In a few weeks, thousands of student teachers will walk into South African classrooms for their teaching practicals and find themselves caught between two competing pressures related to discipline in the classroom: on the one hand, the well-established legal framework regarding their responsibilities towards children, and on the other, the normalisation of violence towards children in our society. These tensions frequently lead to profound ethical dilemmas which student teachers find themselves grappling with, often long after their return to university or college. How to manage these dilemmas is something that must be addressed in their training.

Corporal punishment, defined as any deliberate act against a child that inflicts pain or physical discomfort, has been outlawed in South African schools for 30 years, with a raft of laws, guidelines and judgments shoring up this ban. These include the South African Schools Act of 1996; the National Education Policy Act of 1996; the Abolition of Corporal Punishment Act of 1997; the Constitutional Court judgment in Christian Education South Africa v Minister of Education, 2000; the South African Council of Educators' Ethical Code for Educators, 2024; and the recent Basic Education Laws Amendment Act.

Despite this comprehensive legal framework, student teachers regularly describe...