Samoa College has walked away with the trophy of the Inter-School English Speech Competition held at the C.C.C.S hall at Sogi last Friday.

A total of 10 schools participated in the competition with the discussions revolving around the topic "should corporal punishment be encouraged to discipline our children."

The participating educational institutions included Samoa College, Palalaua College, Aleipata College, Avele College, Papauta Girls College, Faleata College, Anoamaa College, Leifiifi College, Lepa and Lotofaga College and Vaimauga College. 

Most of the speakers agreed with the topic, saying that corporal punishment should be encouraged as its effecting would make the youth and students obey and learn.

The Anoamaa College representative, in her argument, said that people who were beaten the most by their teachers back then are all successful today.

"Look at me, I have many scars and bruises but I don't care because it has helped me reach my goal, and I agree with bringing back corporal punishment to discipline our children," she says.

One of the speakers also highlighted the importance of corporal punishment for children, claiming that it was not done to severely injure a child but to maintain discipline.

"We make mistakes by interpreting wrongly what corporal punishment is. We have seen a lot of successful people, those people were beaten by teachers and it may have hurt but it has definitely taught them a lesson which got them there."

The speeches that were made during the event mainly mainly pushed for the return of corporal punishment to discipline children as they believe teachers only want what's best for them, and the beatings are not done to severely harm the children but to "teach them a lesson". 

In their arguments, the students are really hard at times, and if the teachers remain soft they believe the students will continue to play around because they know they will not be punished.

The top three schools – after the judges' assessment of the speeches are – were third place Avele College, Aleipata College and Samoa College.

An interview with the participants as well as the people involved in putting together the speech competition were not available for comment as of press time.