Corporal punishment in public schools

Great Debates
41

All the blanket statements and half-truths layered on in this thread made me think of a few things myself, to whit:

In all of human history, no method has been found that is more effective at enforcing discipline than the threat of physical pain.

Disciplining a child through corporal punishment is not the same as abuse. Abuse is pain inflicted for no purpose. Punishment, by definition, is pain inflicted for a specific purpose, of which the subject is quite aware.

Teachers are among the most heavily vetted employees anywhere, outside of the military. They undergo criminal background checks in most places, work-history investigations, etc.

Every generation of school children since time immemorial has undergone spankings, or some other form of physical punishment.

The current generation of American schoolchildren is among the first (in our own country, anyway) that operated, by and large, under no threat of corporal punishment.

Given my first statement, what this means is that the most effective form of discipline ever devised is now off-limits to the people in charge of keeping order in our schools.

So is it any wonder things have gone downhill? It’s like asking an army to fight a war without guns, because “shooting people is cruel.”

42

There is a big difference between the 40’s and 50’s and today. Back then a kid would ask for CP in school, rather than having his parents notified. Also disciple of girls was practically non-existant.

Nobody likes any of the answers provided (including me) and in the meantime our school systems are going into the crapper. :smiley: [sup]Whee![/sup]

43

I’m agnostic on the subject of corporal punishment. If there was a way to institute in such a way as to keep teachers from abusing students, I’d be all for it. However, I think CP is one of the few proposals out there that actually addresses a huge and growing problem in our schools:

Kids don’t fear the teachers.

When I was a kid, I responded to my teachers in two ways: the good ones, I respected; the bad ones, I feared. The result was that I was always well behaved. The vast majority of kids I was around were pretty much the same way. When a teacher told you to sit down and be quiet, by golly, you did it. Why? Well, hell, the teacher said to! Don’t mess with the teacher! Because if you mess with the teacher, you may get sent to see the principal! And you really don’t want to get on his bad side! And worse yet - he may tell your parents! And your parents are the Grand High Poombas of Authority In the Universe. What parents say is law. From God, to your parents, to you, and even God may be an unnecessary step.

What were we afraid of? Heck, I don’t know. It’s not like they ever hit us, or threatened us. But they were bigger than us, and they had authority. To a large extent, they were feared because they were adults, and adults wield all the power. If you’re good, the parents use their Power in happy ways that involve you not being grounded. If you’re bad, then yours will be a very unhappy existence.

At least, this is the way the world used to work. But now, more and more kids have decided not to give a damn what the teachers say. And why should they? Their parents don’t care what the teachers say, why should they? And they can always sue if the teacher gets too out of line; if they have the nerve to commit such vile acts as telling you to sit down and be quiet, if they try to assign homework, if they try to give you an F just because you haven’t done a homework assignment all year, well, then that uppity teacher needs to be taught a lesson. Can we say “emotional distress”, boys and girls?

The kids look at the teachers, and see tied hands. They look at their parents, and see apathy. What they don’t see, anywhere, is any sort of threat from authority. Kids aren’t a reasonable bunch - you can’t rationalize to them why being nice and quiet is really in everyone’s best interests. You need to operate on a more instinctual level - you need to basically scare them into obedience.

Maybe corporal punishment is the answer, or maybe not. But what is beyond debate is that teachers need a weapon, metaphorical or not. The real problem is institutional in nature - the entire system needs an attitidue adjustment, and it doesn’t appear to be coming any time soon. Until then, the teachers best be armed with something to stave off the prepubescent hordes.
Jeff

44

I’d like to expand on that some ElJeffe, if you don’t mind.

I actually went to a junior high school and high school (in Texas) during the past ten years where corporal punishment was allowed. It is my personal experience that the kinds of kids who got paddled the most frequently also were the most blasé about it. You would occasionally hear groups of them standing around, bragging and laughing about how many swats they’d gotten, etc. In short, not much deterrence. I think it’s because their parents didn’t care. Now, admittedly it was pretty controlled violence; we didn’t have teachers lashing students in the classroom, it was all done centrally in the principal’s office. But I don’t think anyone’s advocating savage beatings that leave permanent marks or anything like that (that probably would keep the students quiet and scared, but attract the wrong sort of teachers.)

My friends and I never got paddled, ever. It wasn’t the thought of the pain that prevented me from misbehaving, but rather the opprobrium that I would receive upon returning home. The disappointment from my parents, which they’d utilized judiciously on me my entire life, kept me in check. (For the record, they would not have paddled me, but their disapproval would have been far worse.) My group of friends also had loving, supportive, and strict parents, and they all kept out of trouble too.

It seems to me that you can’t hit the kids hard enough to get their obedience if you’re going to be civilized about the whole thing. The most important element is an involved and caring parent – there’s just no substitute for that. Kids aren’t stupid, after all. Let’s face it; there’s plenty of stuff in society that we merely do because we’re socially expected to, and there’s no legal obligation to do so – it’s just the disapproval of our loved ones that keeps us in line. I agree that some reforms are necessary, but you can’t force people to care. And there certainly isn’t one simple solution, be it paddling, or vouchers, or any other single thing.

45

Because a failure to respond is all too often taken as tanamount to fleeong the field of battle, I feel compelled to respond to our some what reactionary friend, December, the origionator of this thread.

“Thanks for this misrepresentation of what I wrote. It illustrates the appeal of good-hearted positions, even when they are actually harming the children.”

I don’t think I have misrepresented you when I refer to your position as being “beat on the kids until they behave” or something like that. Here is what you had to say:

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by december *
**Here are my recommended remedies:[ol][li]Change the law to permit moderate corporal punishment. The disadvantage of allowing teachers to hit students will be more than offset by the advantage of allowing teachers to protect students from each other. Also, the law change will permit greater discipline, which is essential so that education can take place.[]Prohibit lawsuits by students against public schools. These suits harm the students by interfering with necessary discipline. They drain money away from education. They reward dishonesty.Institute school vouchers. Students should not be trapped in hellholes like Emery Elementary School.[/ol] **[/li][/QUOTE]

It is hard for me to read that as anything other than an advocacy of child beating by the government. I know that later you backpedaled to advocate only moderate child beating but that term is so wishy-washy as to have no meaning.

As far as the counterproductiveness of lawsuits is concerned, our collective experience over Lord knows how many generations has taught us (without the benefit of corporal punishment) that the only way you change the behavior of an entrenched bureaucracy is to hit ‘em in the wallet. Law suits change behavior long before school board elections.

No, we didn’t see “special ed” kids when we were kids–they were not allowed out in public let alone sent to school. They were sent to special schools that were warehouses for the cast offs, or kept in the house as too embarrassing to even let the neighbors know about.

46

Your ‘all of human history’ doesn’t include my family I’m afraid. I did not grow up in a household that found the threat of physical pain to be the most effective method of discipline - and I came from a relatively large family. We’ve all managed to come out the other side quite well adjusted, well educated, and without having experienced run-in’s with the law etc. I must say, I would not send my child to a school where the teacher/principal/whoever had the option of beating them with a stick.

On a different tack, as a high school teacher, I have found the most useful method of discipline is one that begins in the class room with definitive rules given from the outset as to appropriate behaviour and expectations (both of the teacher and student), coupled with students being made aware that there are logical conclusions/consequences for their behaviour. I live in a state that does not allow corporal punishment, but even if the option were available, I would be seriously loathe to use it. I think one of the most important factors to consider is the type of person that becomes a teacher. Our world has changed, and whether we like it or not, attention spans (and their lack) are one of the biggest challenges a teacher faces in the class room. If a teacher is unable to enthuse and maintain their students attention, that becomes the open door for behaviour problems. Classes I have enjoyed the most, and have felt that my students were learning the most from, have invariably involved a lot of work. Yet teaching is like any other profession - you have your teachers who are committed to evolving their teaching strategies and techniques to better suit the particular class they are educating any given year (as they must), and you have those who lack organisation skills and/or are unwilling to alter their style of delivery to suit an ever-changing demographic. Just look around your own office - there are those committed to the job they need to do, and there are those who just try to coast along as best they can, hoping that things will turn out OK in the end.

This approach of behaviour/consequences may seem to be a simplistic ‘fluffy kittens and bunnies’ model to some people, however it has worked well for me - and I teach in an inner city school that has its fair share of discipline problems. The key is consistency, and whilst I have had students that make me want to tear my hair out, I have not had any serious incidents that required more than year coordinator involvement.

47

I still haven’t seen any evidence of that “things have gone downhill.” December’s link was (as he admitted) anecdotal and from a personal webpage which also contains interesting discussions of “Rabbits,” “My Stuffed Animal Collection” and “Cagney and Lacey.”

While the homepage boasts that the author of the article is “one of the most literate mice on the net,” I don’t consider rodents to be much of an authority on the education system.

So, until some evidence has been found that the education system is declining, that things are “getting worse,” the debate is based only on conjecture, and its central premise has no factual basis.

48

I understand all too well the forces involved…been there done that. I have detained/arrested fighters from 8-30something. Younger kids, despite their rage are just not emotionally/physically prepared to do the kind of damage that adults and later teens can and do. Their rage also does not allow them to think as clearly about their surroundings making it easier to put them down. They are not focused on you, they are focused on the other fighter.

49

Corporal Punishment in the article, as defined by the administration, would be = touching.

Touching a student is not corporal punishment, as this message board is viewing it.

Touching a student inappropriately (if you misunderstand what I mean by inappropriately, I’m referring to in a sexual manner. if you misunderstand that, you’re either a philosophy or an english major. :slight_smile: is not corporal punishment. That is grounds for 1) firing 2) a lawsuit 3) getting the shit kicked out of you 4) depending on state and region, a bullet in the head.

Teachers, at least in the program that I am in, are HIGHLY scouted. I’m in my final semester, going to be doing my student teaching, and I had to submit my fingerprints and authorize a background check by the FBI before they would let me into the classroom.

Students are blase about how many swats they got? Find a punishment that they fear. Punishment is pointless if it is something that the recepient does not see as a negative reinforcement.

My professors would scream at me for saying this, but punishment works. It’s not pretty. And it’s not always nice. But it works. {But Rodney, it only works when the punisher is there! Like the people who only speed when the cop is nowhere around}. As a teacher, I don’t really care if the student threatens his or her parents. As a teacher, I do care when a pair of senior football players are able to jump and beat a high-school teacher, for whatever reason. As a teacher, I care that a preggers teacher gets punched in the stomach. All the well-wishing and idealistic postulates on the Internet don’t change the fact that, if a student punches a teacher in the stomach, that student should be up on expulsion hearings. If that teacher was pregnant…I’m honestly surprised that there was no lawsuit. Torts work both ways. I’ve heard of instances where we’re making parents legally accountable (read: jail time) for their child being present in school. What if we made them accountable for their children’s actions at school? Somehow, I think that would “encourage” the parents to help the school make sure the student doesn’t disrupt the education of the other 34 students in the class.