Smoke 40 Cigarettes As Punishment??? WHY?? - Extracted from TIMES online

From Times Online

August 6, 2009

Pupil forced to smoke 40 cigarettes in two hours as punishment

A 16-year-old pupil at a school in Malaysia was forced to chain-smoke for two hours after he was caught with a cigarette

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

A 16-year-old pupil at a school in Malaysia has been forced as a punishment to chain-smoke 40 cigarettes in two hours after he was caught with a cigarette.

The two-packet marathon was carried out before an audience of students and teachers. As the deadline loomed and his cigarette consumption flagged, the boy said he had to smoke four cigarettes at a time.

The teacher who found the boy with a cigarette and a lighter was especially furious because, until then, the teenager had been a model of good behaviour and hard work.

A school official, who acknowledged to local reporters in Langkawi that the unorthodox punishment had been administered, assured reporters that it was not a normal feature of academic discipline and “did not happen often”.

Although the school later apologised to the boy’s family, the eccentric punishment joins a growing list of oddities from the world of Malaysian education. The favorite form of discipline in schools has for many years been beating with a salted rattan cane, though teachers occasionally attempt to be more inventive.

In 2007, a national outcry followed revelations that 200 schoolgirls were led from their dormitory outside into the pouring rain and made to crouch in a foetid pond for an hour. The punishment was carried out because nobody owned up to causing the school toilets to become blocked up.

Even the mainstream court system in Malaysia has its moments. On convicting a robber, a judge had to be legally restrained from carrying out the punishment of a ten-lash caning himself.