OPINION
Tenzin Norsang* expresses dismay that despite an official policy against it, and a national philosophy of compassion, corporal punishment continues to be prevalent in exile Tibetan schools and urges administrators, teachers, parents, and everyone else concerned about it to come together to bring this demeaning, ineffective, and outdated mode of disciplining children to an end.
There is a child in a Tibetan classroom right now who is afraid. Not afraid of failing an exam, not afraid of disappointing their parents, but afraid of their teacher’s hand, or a ruler, or a stick. That child is sitting in silence, learning something no curriculum ever intended to teach that authority means pain, and that love and violence can coexist in the same room.
I am not speaking in abstractions. I am speaking about children I know. Children in our community. Children in schools that carry our community’s name and our community’s hope.
I have seen this with my own eyes and felt it in my own home.
My wife’s brother’s son attended Peton Gangkyi School. One of his teachers, as punishment, drew on his face and made him stand in front of the class while his classmates were encouraged to laugh at him. When I heard this, I was shaken to my core. I urged the family to file a formal written complaint. But they were afraid and rightly so. Because everyone who has lived inside this system knows what happens when you complain: the teacher singles out your child. The punishment doesn’t stop. It gets quieter, and it gets worse.
I know this because it has happened to me. It has happened to my own children.
My children have studied in three schools: Sambhota School in Gurupura, Peton Gangkyi School, and the Peton School near the Transit School in Khanyara. They have faced abuse in all three.
At Sambhota Gurupura, one of their teachers forced my daughter to do 100 sit-ups as punishment. The next day, another 100. My daughter had to take a day off school because the pain was so severe she could barely walk. My sons faced similar punishments at the same school. At Peton Gangkyi, physical abuse from teachers was routine slaps, sticks across the legs, knuckles rapped on the head. My children would come home and tell stories of how this teacher beat that student, how that teacher hit this child. I used to wonder why parents stayed silent. Then I remembered: I was one of them. Sometimes I stopped my wife from complaining. Sometimes she stopped me. Because we knew complaining puts your child in the crossfire.
As I write this article today, my sons are studying at the Peton School near the Transit School in Khanyara. And today not years ago, not in some distant memory they were slapped across the face by a teacher. Today. And tonight, as they do most evenings, they came home with stories of which child was beaten by which teacher.
This is not history. This is happening now.
And it is not only my family.
A close friend recently sent their son to TCV Gopalpur to learn Tibetan. The boy was threatened and beaten. But the incident that finally forced them to remove their son from the school was something that should be unimaginable in any institution that calls itself a school: a fellow student repeatedly burned the boy’s forearm with a heated piece of iron. The bullying had gone on for some time. No one had stopped it.
Another friend’s daughter is currently studying at the Peton School near the Transit School. She has been slapped multiple times by a teacher. She comes home bewildered. She asks her parents:
“How can a teacher hit students? Isn’t that a crime?”
She is right. It is a crime.
The law is not ambiguous on this.
The Indian government has explicitly prohibited corporal punishment in schools. Every school is required to have a policy stating clearly that such incidents will not occur. And within our own community, we have something remarkable: the Basic Education Policy, drafted in 2004 a document that was ahead of its time, widely praised for its depth and philosophy. That policy envisions an education rooted in compassion, dignity, and the holistic development of the child.
We drafted it. We praised it. Now we must implement it.
Now I want to ask a harder question one that keeps me awake at night.
Look at where we are as a community. Our leader is ageing. Our people are dispersing across continents. The unity that once held us together is showing cracks that grow harder to ignore with every passing year. When I sit quietly and think about the future of Tibet, the future of our cause, our culture, our identity, I feel a quiet fear that I know many others share but few say aloud.
In this moment, when we should be marshalling every resource we have, I believe with absolute conviction that our future rests on one thing above all else: our people. Our human capital. And the foundation of that human capital is built in our schools.
Our education system is not a side issue. It is not a budget line or an administrative matter. It is one of the most fundamental pillars of the Tibetan struggle. The children sitting in those classrooms today are the advocates, the leaders, the culture-bearers, the negotiators of tomorrow. They will carry the cause forward when the rest of us no longer can. Everything depends on what kind of people they become. And what kind of people they become begins with how they are treated in school.
If we are serious about our cause, we cannot afford to waste a single child’s potential to fear, to trauma, or to the quiet belief that they do not matter. We cannot afford to send them into the world with broken confidence and unhealed wounds. We need them whole. We need them strong. We need them to love being Tibetan; not to associate Tibetan institutions with pain and humiliation.
This is not separate from the struggle for Tibet. It is at the very heart of it.
And then there is this contradiction I find most difficult to reconcile.
Our leader is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The messenger of peace. The man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his unwavering commitment to nonviolence. A man who has spent his entire life teaching love, compassion, and forgiveness not just to his followers, but to his oppressors. He has extended compassion to the very people who took his homeland, destroyed his monasteries, and drove his people into exile. He teaches us, consistently and without exception, that love is stronger than hatred. That compassion is not weakness it is the highest form of strength.
This is our leader. This is our philosophy. This is what we tell the world when we speak of Tibet.
How, then, do we beat our own children?
How do we stand on the world stage as ambassadors of nonviolence and then return home to classrooms where teachers strike students with sticks, slap them across the face, and humiliate them in front of their peers? How do we ask the world to recognise our humanity when we are failing to fully recognise the humanity of our youngest and most vulnerable?
I am not asking this to shame anyone. I am asking because the contradiction is real, and pretending it does not exist only makes it worse.
Love is stronger than fear.
I have heard elders and friends argue that children need to be beaten occasionally to maintain discipline. I understand where this belief comes from. Many of them were raised this way. Many of us were. But I have personally seen teachers who never raise a hand not once and yet command a classroom with complete authority. Their students are engaged, well-behaved, and clearly flourishing. It is possible. It requires effort, creativity, and genuine relationship with the child. But it is entirely possible.
There is a truth that every great tradition including our own has always known: love is stronger than fear. Unconditional love does not make people weak. It makes them capable of extraordinary things. It has dismantled empires, ended wars, and transformed the hardest of hearts. If love can change an oppressor, why would it not work on a growing child?
A call to each of you.
To teachers: You carry an enormous responsibility and often receive too little support. But the stick is not discipline it is the absence of it. There are better ways, and many of your colleagues are already using them.
To parents: Ask your child what happens at school. Ask the school what their discipline policy is. When something happens, document it. Write it down. You may feel alone in this but you are not.
To administrators and policymakers: Enforce the Basic Education Policy. Create safe, anonymous channels for complaints. Protect children who report abuse from retaliation. And protect families who speak up.
And to any Tibetan reading this who studied in a Tibetan school in exile: Just pause for a moment and think. Think about the time, whether it was once or many times, that you were on the receiving end of this treatment. Think about how you felt in that moment. The humiliation, the helplessness, the confusion of being hurt by someone
who was supposed to protect you. Now ask yourself one question: do you want your child to feel that same thing?
I know for a fact that nine out of ten Tibetans who went through our schools will recognise exactly what I am describing. This is not rare. This is our shared experience. And that is precisely why we cannot stay silent any longer.
The schools our community built were built with sacrifice, with vision, with love. Let them be worthy of that origin. Let them be worthy of our leader, our philosophy, and our children.
The stick must stop. Not someday. Now.
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* Tenzin Norsang is a strategic consultant, focused on Tibetan community development. He has worked across institutions including the Central Tibetan Administration, USAID, and Monlam AI. His work centres on building the human capital of the Tibetan community, equipping its people, its institutions, and its next generation with the tools, the knowledge, and the resilience to one day return home.