What Magiver did is not romanticizing, really. More refusing to question the practice. “Worked for my generation, I turned out fine, that settles it.”
It’s understandable. Corporal punishment is most often defended by people with an unquestioning attitude toward established authority.
He now believes that slapping children in the face in front of other children is proper discipline. Yep, he turned out just fine.
Some people believe in self-discipline as a principle to be learned; others believe in outer discipline as a force to be submitted to. There are stops along the continuum as well.
Well, since you only have this one story as an example, my guess is that you never “forgot” to get your paper signed again, and you weren’t ever punished again like that. Seems to me lesson learned.
This (I dunno Ana, maybe you know already) is an example of the philosophy called consequentialism. “The end justifies the means” is its common expression. Ie, all that matters is achieving the desired outcome. Any undesired outcomes - especially anything intangible, like emotional trauma, that anyone might conceivably lie about - are to be accepted as the price of the ticket.
Another ever-popular philosophy among authoritarians, appealing to their belief that people are best regarded as means to ends.
Sounds to me like she never had a problem BEFORE that either, which makes this post an example of absurd post hoc reasoning at best.
No, not really, and please don’t put word in my mouth. I never said that it was justified, just that it appears to have had the desired outcome, with regards to her behavior. (Which she claimed it didn’t)
Seriously? Then how else would you determine the effectiveness of a punishment, if not by taking repeated offenses into consideration?
I’ve heard white people, too, say they wanted to send their kids to Catholic school for the discipline–by which they didn’t mean only corporal punishment, but that was certainly part of it.
Absolutely. And this thinking is certainly not limited to Catholics of whatever color. I personally hear it more from Baptists, Presbyterians, and diffident agnostics.
I’ve heard grown men reminisce with fondness and admiration about being beaten–I think the word is appropriate in this specific case–with their fathers’ belts. “Straightened me out, I tell you what!”
Consequentialism is fairly popular among a lot of people. I don’t think it’s an authoritarian/non authoritarian split, because there are a lot of authoritarians who are fond of deontologicalism, too.
And for that matter, some of the people arguing against corporal punishment in this thread are doing it for consequentialist reasons and others for deontological reasons.
You can conclude the teacher got what he/she wanted out of it, but I don’t think you can draw a meaningful conclusion from punishment for a one-time minor “offense.” It begs for post hoc misinterpretation.
Corporal punishment and adult depression and suicide:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CP3.pdf
Corporal punishment and future depressiona nd violent tendencies:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CPB1R.pdf
Crimonologic effects of Corporal Punishment:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CP106%20%20Crimingenic%20nature%20of%20CP.pdf
Two reports specific to education and corporal punishment:
http://www.aclu.org/human-rights/corporal-punishment-children
Council of Europe’s educating pamphlet:
http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/children/pdf/QuestionAnswer_en.pdf
Then there is the third Geneva Convention, which describe the basic rights to be granted to prisoners of war. (Adult, soldiers, here)
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Full tect: http://www.mineaction.org/downloads/Emine%20Policy%20Pages/Geneva%20Conventions/Geneva%20Convention%20III.pdf
I learned a valuable lesson in 60 seconds. It didn’t take a barrage of psycho-babble from a school administration to understand my feelings and teach me the error of my ways. It wasn’t a beating. It wasn’t much of a slap. It WAS however a dramatic wake-up call followed by a lecture. DONE. My best teachers were nuns. They didn’t get paid squat yet they were the most caring, best educators I ever had.
Is there a genuine racial issue here? Maybe the percentage of white parents who support corporal punishment is the same as the percentage of black parents and Bishop Aymond just happens to preside over a predominantly black school district.
I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of people learned that hitting was just another kind of “love”?
Well yes, it did work for my generation. It worked for my parent’s generation, and their parents…
It’s not a function of unquestioned authority, it’s a reality that getting spanked is part of the mix of punishment for bad behavior.
It’s not a Simpsons episode. of unending paddling. I was paddled exactly twice by my dad. I’ve since forgotten the first one but the 2nd was for using his table saw. My dad was a big man and afraid to paddle because of his size but he damn well wanted me to understand I wasn’t to touch that saw.
I know hitting someone would take less effort than reading a bunch of psychobabble, but I urge you to read the links in post #52.
Unless you want to argue that punishment is not an effective tool for bad behavior then spanking is one of many ways to punish someone.
:rolleyes: Well that explains why Kennedy went to war in Vietnam.
You’re equating a spanking with family violence. You could just as easily substitute mental abuse. You really can’t handle the concept of appropriate disciplinary procedures.
There are definitely significant racial differences in attitudes toward corporal punishment, so it seems plausible that this is a genuine racial / cultural issue.
