Should Schools Paddle?
[Guest post by DRJ]
The Washington Post profiles a Texas town where the parents and the school district have brought back paddling:
“In an era when students talk back to teachers, skip class and wear ever-more-risque clothing to school, one central Texas city has hit upon a deceptively simple solution: Bring back the paddle.
Most school districts across the country banned paddling of students long ago. Texas sat that trend out. Nearly a quarter of the estimated 225,000 students who received corporal punishment nationwide in 2006, the latest figures available, were from the Lone Star State.
But even by Texas standards, Temple is unusual. The city, a compact railroad hub of 60,000 people, banned the practice and then revived it at the demand of parents who longed for the orderly schools of yesteryear. Without paddling, “there were no consequences for kids,” said Steve Wright, who runs a construction business and is Temple’s school board president.
***
Since the policy was changed in May, the school system has paddled only one student, and that was at the request of his parent, [John Hancock, assistant superintendent of administration for the Temple schools] said.Many districts, including Temple, which is nearly evenly divided among white, black and Hispanic students, require parental consent before the punishment is given. Temple also requires the student’s consent, Hancock said, and the punishment is considered equivalent to an out-of-school suspension.
Residents said restoring paddling is less about the punishment and more about the threat.
“It’s like speeding,” said Bill Woodward, a graphic designer. “Are they going to give you a speeding ticket, or . . . a warning? I’d speed all day if I knew it was going to be a warning.”
However, Temple’s new discipline policy may end if Congress passes legislation that abolishes paddling:
“A House subcommittee held a hearing on the practice Thursday, and its chairman, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), is gearing up for a push to end the practice once and for all. She plans to introduce legislation within weeks.”
The Washington Post is taking a poll on whether paddling should be allowed in schools.
— DRJ
Schools absolutely should paddle. Such was the case when I was growing up in Laredo, Texas more than two decades ago.
Mike LaRoche (0e6523) — 4/16/2010 @ 11:22 pmTrue story!
In Highschool the advanced english teacher was . . .
A stereotype.
Kinda gay, kinda lame, But he LOVED the way that the language could be used, and he was very thorough in his teaching. He required that we speak our finals in class, (we had to Write a final, and then describe HOW we came to write it. He said it was his way of telling if we were plagiarizing) and that If we could speak it, we wrote it. Even poorly. in speach or writing, he wanted us to OWN what we wrote.
This guy was sterotypical. Always wore a sweater, had a narrow mustache, and slit eyed glasses. This guy was stereotypical Gay Guy teaching kids (a cousin knew him personally so I can say the rest honestly.) and demanding that we LEARN the language, and how to use it. (I do not demonstrate his lessons well currently) But he CONSTANTLY had to face BS attacks against his sexuality.
My cousin said that when she was taking psych classes, TAUGHT! buy this guy (and my cousin IS gay) at a satellite college, This guy was the BEST associate prof she ever had. And at the time my cousin was a bit of a promiscuous whore (I’m giving up a lot of info here) and became lesbian. And THIS associate professor who became a Teacher, helped her to being focused on education.
Never once (according to my cousin)
Douglas (2c3ce5) — 4/16/2010 @ 11:42 pmcrap, sorry for the conflict.
Anyways, never once did he talk about her lifestyle (as a slut) he told her to focus on school at the time.
Now here is the kicker, (at least for people who know this guy, he’s classic captain knowitall, with long pipe and cardigan) She said that he was thought of as a knowitall when he was an associate professor.
When he became a public school teacher with a post grad, he was seen as gay.
You can never gauge a teacher, unless you know them.
That guy was not gay, as far as I know, nor was he straight as far as I know, but he was a damn good teacher, so I don’t care about the rest.
True story.
I left school when I was 15. some time ago. About 9 years later my AP biology teacher saw my mom at the local grocery store.
My mom is an older woman, and more importantly a woman so distrusts strangers approaching her if they are men, so mom sorta fixed the situation so that she was around others when the guy reached her.
“I think I remember you” he said “youre dougs mother.”
“You know my son?” (I was expelled, so mom kinda got flinty”
“I LOVED and HATED that kid, but I always believed he would make something of his life. One of my best and worst students.”
“He’s in the Marine Corps now, I don’t know if he ‘made anything of his life’ But he’s not here right now.”
(mom is a Marine Wife as well as a Marine Mother.
“That’s something ma’am, that is definitely something. Sorry for interrupting you.”
I had a FEW good teachers, and definitely one good mother.
Where’s my effing ball of yarn?
Douglas (2c3ce5) — 4/16/2010 @ 11:52 pmi think corporal punishment would be more effective if you could use it on the parents, teachers and school administrators…..
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:35 amRight on, redc14.
Without paddling, “there were no consequences for kids,” said Steve Wright, who runs a construction business and is Temple’s school board president.
This guy has no idea what to do with a kid other than hit him? I feel sorry for his children, for what they are probably going through now and for what devil’s spawn like him they will turn out to be.
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:41 amWent I went to school in Texas (1968), they held assemblies to paddle students in front of the entire school.
Perfectsense (0922fa) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:53 amTime to kick disruptive kids outta school place thm in a mandatory reform school and make the parents pay for the added education
bet lots of disruptive kids would suddenly become little angels
EricPWJohnson (0044aa) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:58 amI have no problem with corporal punishment, if used at the parent’s discretion, but the thought of an administrator paddling my child creeps me the hell out.
Note to Texas: Ever hear of detention? It will keep kids in line, if it is applied consistently to correct unwanted behavior.
Sean P (334463) — 4/17/2010 @ 5:11 amWhen I went to school in Houston (1980s) the school sent home a consent form to allow them to paddle your child. My mom always signed it. But the 1 time I was threatened with it, they called my mother first to inform her of my transgression and their plan of punishment and she argued against the punishment, so I was let off with detention.
Sherri (5e3496) — 4/17/2010 @ 5:23 amWhen I was in high school (Catholic School) we had this little brother (Christian) who had a unique way of dealing with smartass kids. It was a boys’ school which makes things different from public school. He would tell the kid to meet him in the gym with gym clothes on. Then he would show up with two sets of boxing gloves. He was well known for this. He was about 5-6 and probably weighed 120 pounds. He would then proceed to beat the crap out of 6 foot kids. He was an all-Ireland champion lightweight before he became a brother. Almost all kids knew about this so they would shape up once he started talking about “the gloves.”
On another occasion, another brother tried to deal with a kid who came to school with a long ducktail hair style and was a wise guy. He told him to cut his hair a few times and then, finally, one day, locked the classroom doors and turned to the class and said “Cut his hair !”
It was a pretty well behaved bunch. No paddling but it had a similar effect.
Mike K (2cf494) — 4/17/2010 @ 6:37 amThey paddle here in Alabama.
When my son came home from his first day of Junior High with the paper he wanted us to sign so he wouldn’t get paddled if he did something wrong, we refused.
Then we explained to him that if he did something bad enough to get paddled at school, it would be worse when he got home.
4.0 high school valedictorian, varsity letter in tennis, drum major for the marching band, now third year in college with a 3.9 GPA, headed for law school.
Not saying paddling is why, just saying it’s part of an overall structure that fosters an ethic….
Virtual Insanity (d93c26) — 4/17/2010 @ 6:47 amThe education establishment has decided that paddling is an offense so great that even potential teachers who think it may have merits must be expelled.
Potential teacher Scott McConnell found out the hard way when a paper that got a grade of A- ultimately got him dropped (expelled) from Le Moyne College.
Neo (7830e6) — 4/17/2010 @ 7:38 amInteresting article, Neo.
I think there’s a common thread here.
In general, kids from which regions are more respectful?
Virtual Insanity (d93c26) — 4/17/2010 @ 7:59 amI say “no”. I spanked my kids when appropriate, but it is not the place of the school to do so.
Some chump (c2555f) — 4/17/2010 @ 8:24 amIt’s good to see congress wants to get in on the act. I can’t think of a more deserving bunch to get the paddle than our congressmen!
Before we vote them out can we paddle them?
DT (54e188) — 4/17/2010 @ 8:27 amTime to get government out of education.
Horatio (55069c) — 4/17/2010 @ 8:32 amWith parental consent, yes.
Kids are not adults. Reason, or threats of being fired, doesn’t always work.
Patricia (fa8e06) — 4/17/2010 @ 8:44 am> “A House subcommittee held a hearing on the practice Thursday, and its chairman, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), is gearing up for a push to end the practice once and for all. She plans to introduce legislation within weeks.”
What the HELL is the Federal legislature using to base any such law on?
Is the sale and distribution of paddles falling under the commerce clause?
Yeesh.
> This guy has no idea what to do with a kid other than hit him? I feel sorry for his children, for what they are probably going through now and for what devil’s spawn like him they will turn out to be.
Are you just a moron or… No, never mind, the answer to that is obvious.
“No idea”? It’s quite clear it’s a LAST RESORT, not a first resort you clothead. If this is handled properly, then by the time you get to that it’s likely the child/youth has passed boundaries time and again despite their clearly being set for him.
And I stand in support of it despite the fact that I can recall more than one instance when I had no business getting paddled whatsoever.
The lack of discipline at all levels — both at home and at school — is at least contributory to the current absolute failure of education in this nation.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/17/2010 @ 10:02 amWhen the general rule of thumb in our society used to be if a kid got in trouble at school, that same kid knew that when he got home would get in trouble twofold. There was a mutual support system between school and home. And the expectations of behavior were generally the same as well. This was the necessary reinforcement to keep well managed classrooms as well as homes.
Now, however, there is such an immense breakdown of the familial structure with absent parents, those gaps have thrown out of balance the school/home reinforcement system. Far too frequently it rests with the school to take on the role of disciplinarian in kids’ lives with parents freely abdicating their responsibility.
The bottom line to me is, if parents are consistently disciplining at home with very real consequences experienced for bad behavior, whether to allow the school to paddle one’s kid won’t even be an issue.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/17/2010 @ 10:03 amGreetings:
I received 13 years of Catholic education back in the Bronx of of the ’50s and ’60s. I was the beneficiary of corporal punishment on quite a few occasions. In grammar school, I had Sisters of Mercy. Some availed themselves of the opportunity, some didn’t, a few raised it to an art-form. To me, the experience of having to walk up to the front of the class, shortly after your transgression, and bend over or put your hand out was more affecting psychologically than the actual punishment was physically.
My problem with the Texas re-incarnation is the time lag and permission sequence of the application. To me, sooner is better and public is better still. The temporal connection between the misbehavior’s occurrence and the delivery of the negative stimulus is the key to its effectiveness. The added benefit of the public nature of the exercise is that the wind is taken out of the sails not only of the identified miscreant but also any unidentified fellow travelers who may still be lurking about.
Finally, if I may blow my own horn a bit, I like to think that I invented the “Is this a one parent problem or a two parent problem?” inquiry.
11B40 (f3fa78) — 4/17/2010 @ 10:07 amI think hitting children as a routine form of discipline is ignorant, and mean, and perverted.
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 11:10 amnk,
Out of curiosity, not malice, do you have kids?
Virtual Insanity (d93c26) — 4/17/2010 @ 11:13 amI have an eight-year old daughter. We don’t spank her. We don’t have to. She is an A student generally, and reads at fifth grade level specifically. She is well-behaved, friendly and good-natured. She rides horses, practices archery and staff-fighting, and plays piano. Swords and knives in our house have always been accessible to her but she has always known they are not toys.
And I don’t want her growing up like some commenters on this thread thinking that it’s ok for people to lay their hands on her. I want her growing up like John Wayne: “I will not be laid hands on.” Just as she knows to keep her hands off other peoples’ persons and property.
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 11:32 amI think there are three kinds of people who like to hit kids.
1. People who grew up that way, being hit by their parents, so they think it’s normal;
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:15 pm2. People who never boxed, or play football, or engage in similar sports, so they don’t know what it means to be hit;
3. Perverts.
No, they should not; and I would withdraw any child of mine from a school that practiced it.
SarahW (af7312) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:37 pmkids what get beat unjustly are well within their rights to show up the next day with daddy’s submachine gun I think
happyfeet (c8caab) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:42 pmand I think it’s safe to say that most kids are going to think it unjust
happyfeet (c8caab) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:48 pmSo much for state’s rights.
ChicagoJedi (884039) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:51 pmAny beating for the sake of school discipline (making teachers’s jobs easier) is unjust.
But no submachine gun. Maybe daddy giving the teacher a taste of his own medicine with bo, jo or bokken.
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 12:54 pmnk,
Do you think your opinion might change when your beautiful daughter and her friends are the victims of middle school bullies who won’t stop despite being disciplined, and the school administrators respond to your complaints by saying they’ve done all they can do?
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:26 pmThey did it some when I was in junior high school…I never came near to getting it myself.
Frankly, some of the kids I went to school with should have been stomped into the cracks in the sidewalk and then stomped again once they got better.
Technomad (e2c0f2) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:29 pmWhen I was in grade school (catholic, but no nuns) they had coporal punishment in the form of “The Strap”. It was a almost mythical form of discipline that no one had seen but all had heard stories about. It was wide, it was narrow, it was heavy leather, it was made of wood. No one actually knew someone who had gotten the strap but we all heard about people (no longer there) that had gotten it and how horrific it was. In any event one of the crimes that warranted the strap was throwing snowballs (the teachers were sure that large numbers of eyes would be put out by this practice). I think it was grade 6 and I was about a medium or slightly lower then medium popular student. At recess a couple of buddies and I got caught throwing snowballs and were sentenced to the strap. After recess we were marched out of class and down the hall under the eyes of two teachers and all the students that could watch, craning to see out the open doorways (they all knew our crime and what the punishment was). Well to be honest I was scared witless with visions of the strap and what my mother would do (I was sure that the principal would rat me out). Well, we were made to stand in front of the principal with our left hand out. palm up. She then took out the strap. What a let-down. It was the size of a ruler, made out of cheap leather about a 1/4 inch thick. Three whacks and punishment was over. Not even sure it hurt. When we marched back to class there was a new respect from the other kids. My standing went from low/medium popular to med/high simply on the basis of surviving the strap. From then on, the strap was no longer a deterence value.
I guess my point is (with the long story) is that it sounds like this town has a lot more problems in discipline then paddling is going to cure. Once someone gets it, it will lose it’s fear factor. I think the parents and the school board really need to take a long look to see how they are both handling discipline. Maybe they need to look at other things as well. While it doesn’t work everywhere, standard school uniforms can help as well as a school community service sentence for wrong doing. Nothing like mopping a school hallway while your friends watch to help instill a little judgement in a child.
scr_north (d17739) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:37 pmMy high school had a boys boxing class for PE taught by the football coach who was a WWII vet Marine.
If you were a screw off around school (or god forbid in the class), he’d use you in a demonstration on how to rip a series of hooks to the body.
The water polo coach would toss you the ball and have you drowned.
The wrestling coach would twist you into a pretzel so you’d be sore for days from being stretched and torqued around.
I was paddled all the way through grade school… beyond grade school the scheme was to green light it to the older bigger kids…so they’d wrap you up in a blanket and beat you like that side of beef in Rocky.
I learned to stay out of that real fast.
I didn’t much mind the punishment pain wise, and I got the idea of what I was being punished for. But I think it triggered a giant rebellious streak and a hatred for authority that in turn led to some trouble that was hard to unwind and grow forward out of.
Of all the corporal punishments, I liked the water polo one the best. That coach would bean you with a ball when you came up for air too. Great arm and aim on that guy. He’d also start beaning kids if they held you under for too long.
Steve G (7d4c78) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:44 pmI guess it seemed sporting…
> I think hitting children as a routine form of discipline is ignorant, and mean, and perverted.
I think having the notion that pain, one of nature’s most well developed learning-reinforcement mechanisms, identified as completely “out of bounds” is ignorantly naive, foolish in the extreme, and exceptionally immature.
Thousands of generations of humans have been raised under these “ignorant, mean, and perverted” conditions, yet civilization exists and has made man the most successful species in the history of the planet. “Give me more of that”. Despite this “unconscionable thing”, humans are capable of astounding bits of decency and kindness. Indeed, for many, it evokes a positive social response — when you have known pain, you can through it, empathize with others who are in pain in a manner which you cannot approach if you’ve never known pain. Pain is a part of life.
This is not to suggest that controls on its use should not exist. It’s not to suggest that it should not represent a last resort when other, less extreme methods have been tried and failed. But the idea that children must never experience pain to teach them something only leaves the child partly matured and partly developed and partly prepared for the REAL WORLD, which will contain pain, unhappiness, and even substantial sadness as a innate part of life.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is not just a biblical line, it’s an accurate description of the human condition.
> I think there are three kinds of people who like to hit kids.
OK, first off:
YOU ARE AN IGNORANT PIECE OF EXCREMENT.
Second off:
You’re totally, cluelessly ignorant of this blatantly evident fact.
Third off:
You’re so clueless of how you just insulted a vast array of VERY NORMAL, WELL_BALANCED PEOPLE.
Fourth:
That you are abysmally ignorant is your incapacity to grasp that “hitting” a child does not mean you are doing it in anger, or out of some asinine “it happened to me so I’m doing it to you” kind of projected vengeance. Like most idiots, you are operating under a very limited, blinkered concept which is utterly stupid, clueless, and totally inept perception of reality.
Funny how “the smart ones” can only perceive the world in a limited, fixed number of states all the while they speak of themselves, and never others, of being so specially “nuanced”. Funny in the “oh, geez, gimme a f’in break!” sense, not the “ha-ha” sense.
Oh, and, in case you can’t figure it out, I am now quite certain you’re an arrogant prick at best. I will lay odds your child is probably an insufferable prig to match you. You ARE lucky you had a female, as if your offspring were a boy I have no doubt he’d be spending half of his high school years climbing out of dumpsters and de-wedging his underpants. Because school children DON’T hesitate to apply such corrective behavioral measures to boys. (Girls may well have their own equivalent behavioral techniques to apply, I can’t really speak for those)
> I want her growing up like John Wayne: “I will not be laid hands on.”
Yeah, that attitude should serve her real well when the police come to haul her off to the concentration camps.
Life is not a black and white western, son. When you’ve done wrong, you need to accept that there are those with authority who have the power to “lay hands on you” within certain rational limts. And that’s always going to be the case.
> Maybe daddy giving the teacher a taste of his own medicine with bo, jo or bokken.
…like I said.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:51 pma) This is expressly stated as only being done with the parent’s explicit permission
b) It’s being done by administrators, not teachers, though others here have easily made the very clear point that many schools throughout history have allowed teachers that power without the universe caving in.
c) There is a considerable difference between getting your hands smacked with a ruler and getting struck with martial arts weapons. Not that you’ve demonstrated brains enough to grasp such a self-evidently “nuanced” concept.
Steve, I’ll grant that some, if not many, of your own experiences were and are a bit over the top. This isn’t the type of “corporal punishment” being discussed in this circumstance. It’s one where there is a clear protocol and it ties to a very specific procedure which has been violated. And if the parent thinks the conditions don’t warrant it, they can refuse it. That should be able to deal with most instances where it would be abused.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/17/2010 @ 1:58 pmEvery animal on earth that raises its young uses pain as a negative reinforcer.
gahrie (9d1bb3) — 4/17/2010 @ 2:09 pmnk, do you believe it’s possible for a parent to spank their child as a result of their immense love for that child or do you see spanking and love as mutually exclusive?
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/17/2010 @ 2:17 pmSome children need an attention getter and paddling is one tool to get there… and it is a tool that should be used very rarely and with careful attention to the type of kid you are dealing with.
Steve G (7d4c78) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:21 pmFrom a college newspaper editorial some years ago:
======================================
    Graphic illustration of what the hell is wrong with this society: a college male yells at
a group of college females, calling them ‘water buffaloes.’ They tell on him, he gets put on
probation, he is threatened with suspension and he is forced to take a ‘sensitivity training
course.’
    Sensitivity;     I hate that word.
    Sensitivity is no longer an admirable quality. It is something forced upon everyone. Laws
are being altered to force people to become ‘more sensitive,’ and those who are not have to
fake it to avoid arrest by the New Age Police.
    This is the outcome of a generation of sissies, and I tell you, it makes me sick.
    All kids until now had a set of rules. If somebody called you a name you didn’t take a shine
to, you grabbed him and beat the tar out of him.
    These were simple rules. It was a model of frontier justice, and every kid understood it.
[As Bo Diddley said, ‘You don’t let your mouth write no check your tail can’t cash.’]
    And it worked.
    Sure, there were kids who ran and told, but they always got their tail kicked sooner or later…
    But somewhere along the line, these bonehead hippies decided to instill new values in their
kids; ‘ALWAYS run to the teacher and squeal, NEVER stay and fight.’
    So instead of learning to stand up and fight, learning to say when, kids learned to be finks
and crybabies.
    Of course not every single parent taught this to every single kid, but it was a pervasive
philosophy that slowly crept across popular conciousness. Teachers taught it in school.
Babysitters reinforced it, and slowly it became the generally accepted path for childhood.”
    And now, the end result is more lawsuits than ever. There’s lawsuits over name calling
and emotional damage because some wimp gets their feelings hurt.
    So when someone calls someone a name, they get reprimanded for not being sensitive. But
he does not need to be. Everyone needs to quit complaining and toughen up a little.
    Those women from the original example should have grabbed that guy and beaten
the bejesus out of him. If you can’t handle name-calling without running to school officials,
you clearly missed out on part of the maturing process.
    If someone is telling ‘nigger’ jokes, he should get his butt kicked. It would teach him decorum,
as well as letting everyone know what kind of person he is.
    But instead children are taught to tell ‘nigger’ jokes in private. That way they can be racist
while everyone thinks they are sensitive.
    … Fortunately, I was raised in a throwback community, cut off from fancy-shmancy
eduacational improvements. If some kid took my basketball, I hit him and took my ball back.
If he didn’t cry, we’d play together and end up friends.
    If I called a girl stupid, she’d round up a bunch of her homegirls and make me look bad in
front of my friends. Then I would learn that she was not to be trifled with.
    What parents today don’t realize is that kids are incredibly resilient and perceptive. By
raising a generation of kids where parents are afraid to hit them because it constitutes abuse,
we have a generation of teens who think they
are above punishment.
    My mom used to smack me with a wooden spoon. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe.
    … That’s what we need more of — my mom whipping kids with a wooden spoon. There is no
such thing as a fine line between discipline and abuse — there is a big, fat line, and every
kid knows it. Sure, that spoon hurt, but was it abuse? Hell no, it was a lesson, and it worked.
    In no way does telling kids what to think open their minds.
    … Kids have to sort things out on their own. It has worked that way for centuries. But now
we have established a culture of blame, and we teach kids no matter what they do, it is not
their fault — someone else is responsible.
    There is now a generation of immature, self-involved brats with short attention spans and
no sense of discipline.
    And one day, they’ll be in charge.
– Nathaniel Hensley –
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:23 pmComment by IgotBupkis — 4/17/2010 @ 1:51 pm
nk is not…(fill in list from above)…
AD - RtR/OS! (df7269) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:24 pmhe’s a lawyer!
Now THAT is bent. The preview handles the   like it’s supposed to, but the actual comment engine itself does not.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:26 pmIgotBupkis,
What was the   supposed to look like and I’ll bring it to the attention of the programmers?
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:46 pmDRJ~ it’s a “hard space,” used for formatting text (like poetry or verse).
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 4/17/2010 @ 3:53 pmnk,
Do you think your opinion might change when your beautiful daughter and her friends are the victims of middle school bullies who won’t stop despite being disciplined, and the school administrators respond to your complaints by saying they’ve done all they can do?
Comment by DRJ — 4/17/2010 @ 1:26 pm
I am teaching her to defend herself in various situations and what the police and criminal courts are for.
nk, do you believe it’s possible for a parent to spank their child as a result of their immense love for that child or do you see spanking and love as mutually exclusive?
Comment by Dana — 4/17/2010 @ 2:17 pm
When I worked at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Child Abuse and Neglect Section, all the parents we were fighting with for custody claimed to love their children very much. Including the pair which let one of their children starve to death when, according to the medical examiner, a hamburger would have saved him.
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:05 pmThat’s way over the top, Bupkis. Nk has been around here for a long time. He’s a decent, salt-of-the-earth guy and very intelligent. There’s no call for you saying what you did about him.
Some chump (c2555f) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:12 pmWhen I worked at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Child Abuse and Neglect Section, all the parents we were fighting with for custody claimed to love their children very much. Including the pair which let one of their children starve to death when, according to the medical examiner, a hamburger would have saved him.
I understand your point. And yet do a few despicable humans nullify parents who actually do love their children and because of their conscientiousness and principles believe a spank on the bottom is a necessary consequence and/or deterrent? Is the whole barrel, by default, forever contaminated?
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/17/2010 @ 4:59 pmDRJ
your comment on the bullies, aren’t there criminal and civil remedies available? Also we need to start charging the parents for their disruptive kids
EricPWJohnson (79703a) — 4/17/2010 @ 5:03 pmnk and Eric,
You’re both right that we handle bullies today in criminal court. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that you view paddling as an overreaction, but it’s not overreacting to charge middle school students with crimes if they cause problems at school.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/17/2010 @ 5:40 pmJust to make it clear, I apply the rule of lenity to parents as well as children. The rare swat on the bottom or even a light slap on the mouth will not get opprobrium from me. Parents are people too and kids do things that are dangerous to themselves and others and say things they should not say and the situation defines itself. But hitting kids as a part of raising them and not something that’s like roseola or a strepthroat? No! Hell, no!
nk (db4a41) — 4/17/2010 @ 5:53 pmI think nk is on the money and he’s probably right that a fullscale submachine gun assault would be overkill, especially on a first offense.
Still, there’s lots of stuff in a school you can set on fire.
happyfeet (c8caab) — 4/17/2010 @ 7:46 pmDRJ
I am not against paddling in schools at all, my problem is that bullying is a crime, one that a spanking will not and never has solved – only made the situation even worse.
Its interesting that the only two places where vast amounts of Americans are mandatorily grouped together for long periods of time are the public schools and the military.
The military prosecutes bullies, disrupting members but we are to hand over to a social studies teacher the role of striking A CHILD.
Not seeing it – I know people are frustrated with problems in the school district but I think it stems more from a total lack of consequences than from swinging the pendulum in the other direction
EricPWJohnson (79703a) — 4/17/2010 @ 8:51 pmSpeaking from personal experience, hf, it is unwise to leave a kid you just paddled in your office unattended.
And if you use the janitor to hold the kid while you paddle, you can be sure he will find his name written on the bathroom wall in suspicious substances.
A friend of mine moved to Newhall during third or fourth grade and had trouble adjusting. He got spanked, so he started a brushfire to try to burn the school.
Later, when he was 18, he was still harboring a grudge against the principal, so he got high, broke in at night and trashed the offices. LA Sheriffs get there and he is swinging some podium or something so they tuned him up with the billy clubs a little bit. I visited him in LA County and his head was stitched like an oozing football.
Last time I saw him he was in the Aryan Brotherhood.
SteveG (11baba) — 4/18/2010 @ 12:19 amI’d google him, but I’m afraid what I’d find
> DRJ~ it’s a “hard space,” used for formatting text (like poetry or verse).
Essentially. It’s useful for forcing indents in text, since most comment engines eat leading spaces on each line.
It can also be used for spacing purposes when you want more than a single space between “words”, as, again, most comment engines eat runs of spaces.
If the engine didn’t support it, I would not think it odd, but the preview engine DOES… which is more odd.
Here is a page listing the ones html nominally supports. I don’t think all of them need to be implemented, but there are several which are of occasional use.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:09 pmI think Congress has better things to do than debate nationwide spanking policies. And even if they didn’t, I hate to think what school policies they will enact next.
Now, as far as spanking goes, if you mean the angry, mean spirited, unwise use of corporal punishment that breeds hate and contempt, I’m agin it; but if you mean the patient, loving, “I hate to do this, but after discussing it, giving detention, and not letting you suit-up for the football game, you leave me no choice but to apply the board of education to the seat of learning and you’ll thank me for it when you graduate”, I’m all for it.
Seriously, I know people I respect who say it is never necessary, and I know others who swear by it’s use rarely but never take it off the table as an option. I would be very slow to let anyone do it that I didn’t know very well and didn’t know my children very well. Some of the teachers my sons had the most trouble with were impulsive and stubborn themselves.
MD in Philly (59a3ad) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:38 pm> A friend of mine moved to Newhall during third or fourth grade and had trouble adjusting. He got spanked, so he started a brushfire to try to burn the school.
Uh, Steve, if that was his solution to getting spanked, he was already in trouble adjusting to life. What subsequently followed is just further proof.
My first guess would be the parents, but that’s nothing better than idle speculation.
I got paddled in eighth grade by an assistant principle for doing exactly what he told me to do in a situation, which was to come to him, then getting annoyed when he blew me off. The SOB paddled ME because he would not admit he was wrong in the first place. I never seriously entertained any such extreme followup responses, despite the fact that I’ve never forgotten it.
And that, by the way, is why, as a parent, I’d want to know the circumstances of such paddling before it occurred. And if I thought there was any question about it I would intervene and decide on measures for myself when I got the whole story.
But note that, despite this, I still want the OPTION of paddling there.
I think the current generation is often starved for discipline — they all too often fail to get proper attention, and so many do things — “act up” — to get it, and, until they get attention which is serious, they often escalate. And if they never get it, they never grow up. Because one thing they never learn is that actions have consequences, and those consequences are often not something pleasant, comfortable, or even “reasonable”. Extra Emphasis on that last word very much intended.
There was a time when screwing up and disobeying your parents meant getting eaten by a tiger or a bear.
There’s still lots of bears and tigers out there, but they don’t look quite the same. Nowadays they’re dressed up as “drunk driving”, “unsafe sex” and a host of other more tricky issues. Kids need to understand consequences. And physical discomfort is both a natural feedback mechanism and an inevitable part of the consequence mechanism. So it’s good that they learn early on what it is.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 4/19/2010 @ 9:54 pm