This is absolutely unambiguously false. The few studies that have been able to any statistically relevant conclusion one way or the other have shown that parental corporal punishment is mildly beneficial, and more beneficial than at least ten other commonly used punishments (see for instance Larzelere’s meta-analysis, amongst others).
Even thinking about your statement for a second demonstrates how absurd it is. The overwhelming majority of British families practice “smacking” in the home. We aren’t a nation of people with personality disorders.
No, it isn’t so. Here’s an excerpt from a submission to the UN’s study on Violence Against Children by Larzelere on behalf of the American College of Paediatricians:
On those studies that find a detrimental effect:
The submission can be found here. Larzelere, in a separate study, went on to demonstrate that the same methodologies that are used to indicate that “smacking” and other corporal punishment leads to violent behaviour in children also indicate equally detrimental outcomes for other types of punishment.
That was the attitude of both my sons. They’d rather get their one or two “licks” from the paddle and go on back to whatever they were doing. They didn’t see it as any big deal. (Their school sometimes gave students a choice between paddling and detention. )
The recent GAO study shows that some educators are abusing children in the guise of corporal punishment. I have no confidence that a policy which includes corporal punishment will be consistently applied responsibly, and the consequences of such a policy when applied irresponsibly can be deadly. I don’t want corporal punishment used in schools. I especially do not want it administered to my son who has large tumors which are very sensitive. Tell me how do they avoid spanking kids who have conditions that would be exacerbated by spanking? How do you do this when the conditions have not yet been diagnosed?
When I went to school, some kids would set up targets so they would end up receiving punishment from the administration. Groups had gotten quite good at knowing how to set it up and used that as a threat to manipulate other students. A principal who patrolled the lunchroom with a paddle made that manipulation all the easier.
I don’t spank my children, not least of all because pain doesn’t seem that much of a deterrent. I have seen both of them run into solid objects at full speed, fall down and giggle. I have tried very hard to not coddle them when they receive owies and as a consequence, they largely ignore them unless severe, like their toe nail comes off. I don’t want to do anything to them that would be painful enough to get their attention.
We also like to engage in horseplay and I don’t want them to associate a light swat with punishment. I watch my husband hobbling behind my laughing two year old threatening playfully, “I am going to kick you in the bum! I am going to bop you in the head. I am going to give you the boot!” followed by the lightest of kicks and taps, when he can catch up to the two year old, and then sometimes lots of tickling. Contrast this to my nephew who started bawling when he was accidentally nudged on the bottom because he thought he was being spanked.
That being said, even if I did spank my children, I wouldn’t want their school to.
Firstly, finding people who have died from innocuous treatment is very easy. People who complain that tasers kill people, for example, are generally ignorant that just as many people die by being forced to lie down flat while they are handcuffed. Out of a sufficiently large population, some are just ready to die right at that moment. It doesn’t take anything that would be considered excessive by anyone’s standards.
Secondly, the report is about restraining and secluding. Those are, I believe, essentially the sort of alternatives that are proposed in lieu of corporal punishment. If we can’t tell a kid to go sit alone for a bit and consider his actions, well gosh darn it but what are you suggesting that is any easier on the kid?
Paddling was (and still is) done in our school district. There are certain parameters in place. These are the ones when I was in high school in the late '90s:
3 swat maximum.
Performed by an administrator, with another administrator to witness, in private.
The administrator giving the swats must be the same sex as the student receiving the swats.
Parents can opt-out.
And this is the one that is most important, to me anyway:
Taking licks was and is the student’s choice.
Let’s say you get caught with tobacco on campus. Normally that would result in a 3 day suspension on the first offense. The principal gives the student the option of 3 days suspension or 3 swats and back to class. Personally, the few times I got in trouble, I always took the licks and got on with my day.
I always felt the same way as a child–I would much rather get a spanking than get put on time out or whatever. You still have to pay the piper, and it’s not pleasant, but you don’t have to deal with the parents being angry for as long.
A junior school head master tried to cane me once for something that I did not do. I grabbed the cane and chased him around the room flailing at him. He never made an accusation against me again.
I don’t think that violence against children is a good thing or a useful thing.
What about physical discomfort that isn’t violent? We joke at my school that coaches are the last people in America that can use corporal punishment: fail math and can’t play? Run laps. Team misbehaves on the bus ride home from the game? Laps for everyone. Teacher complains that you are sleeping in class? Run laps. (or other physical-type stuff). Is that sort of thing ok? What about for non-athletes?
Schools need some kind of negative consequence, and right now we don’t have anything. Suspension doesn’t mean anything, in school or out, especially when you are expected to give the student the chance to make up their work (and kids don’t, generally, understand that missing class makes later tests harder). Some parents will impose punishments, but many won’t, so that’s not consistent. There’s a strong (and reasonable) prejudice against docking someone’s grade due to behavior. Literally, all a teacher has to hold a class together is strong personality. For me, teaching all juniors and seniors in advanced academic classes, that is generally enough. If I were teaching 7th grade, that wouldn’t be enough.
I guess I’m just a dinosaur. Having corporal punishment when I was in grade school made me listen to the teachers Or Else get my rear end whacked. I never got paddled, but I watched other kids get paddled.
This was in South Carolina in the early 1980s. Punishment was from 1 to 5 “licks” depending on the severity of the infraction. Anything more than 3 had to be done by the principal in his office. The teacher had discretion for the 1 to 3 variety.
I understand what everyone else is saying in this thread, but when I see some of the kids at my daughter’s school acting up, I just wonder if they would be doing this if the threat of that wooden paddle was still hanging over them. There’s a few that I would personally beat myself if not for the whole jail thing…
According to my mother this was true of boys and only boys. Boys were usually paddled (on fully clothed behinds in front of the class by the teacher. Girls were rarely paddled; when they were sent to the office for one of the secretaries or a woman teacher to administer CP in private. Male staff members weren’t even allowed to be present, let along hit a girl. Both of my uncles did receive *bare-bottomed *spankings in school, but those were rare and only occured in the principal’s office away from other students (well at least away from girls and boys who weren’t also being punished), but not female staff.
This was at a public school in the late 50s to mid 60s. Like most parents my grandmother used CP at home, but even she had her limits. One of my uncle’s teachers once shoved his head into a wall, and he ended up needing stitches. The school’s response was to have a stern talk with that teacher and offer to pay for the stitches. Grandma resonded by pulling her kids out of that school and sending them to one in the next town over. The school though she was overreacting.
Even where it’s still allowed I find it hard to imagine that very many teachers or administrators would be willing to administer CP to high school age students. This isn’t “ye good old days” were teachers could take for granted that they had the unconditional support of the parents & community and even the most incorrigible taking it instead of fighting back. Nowdays trying to paddle a student (particulary a teenager bigger than the teacher) sounds like a great way to end up in the emergency room.
Why should schoolteachers be allowed to administer punishments to children that even prison officials can’t administer to adult inmates who’ve been convicted of felony?
Do you have a cite for this, is is it just a guess on your part? My guess wold be that a lot of psychological punishment can have much more lasting effects than spankings.
When I was in grammar school we got a new principal who brought a paddle into his office. After a certain number of warnings he’d give you a swat. The next time, you got two, then three, etc. But it was done in his office, in private. Oh, and he first had to get permission from the student’s parents. Probably about 7 kids out of 100 were asked to touch their toes.
I think you are 100% correct on both points. One reason that corporal punishment works better on younger kids is that it takes very little strength on the part of the adult to administer it. Once they get older and there is a possibility that it turns into a fight, it should be avoided.
Yeah… corporal punishment for high school kids is probably a bad idea. But I must admit that when I was 16, 17, or even 18 and still in school, I damn sure wouldn’t have thought of turning a hand to a teacher in any situation.
Another thing I remember was that if you had a feeble old lady for a teacher, she didn’t do her own paddling. She brought in the strapping young steroid-enhanced (at least to our young eyes) teacher with bulging arm veins to administer her paddlings. You fucked with old lady teachers far less than anyone…
… is this a cultural thing? Is it April 1st again? Am I in the Twilight Zone?
Hell no, a teacher has no damn business to beat/paddle/whatever a student. If he/she can’t get the attention/respect, he/she’s in the wrong job. There are enough unpleasant punishments for students except physical abuse. Where am I, back in the 50’s again? I might agree that limited physical punishment under some pretty hard constraints from the parents is acceptable, but from a teacher? Never. It was unthinkable that a teacher would hit a student in my time at school ('87 or so till '00), and most of the teachers were able to get the students to behave just fine. The rest would have had to beat one of us to death to get some respect. Some of them were psychopaths who I wouldn’t trust at all with power like that.
Also, I can follow Der Trihs’ reasoning - if you hit children as punishment, why not adults? Surely they would understand cause and effect even better?
In other words, there hardly wasn’t any punishment at all, and the effect on your behaviour was minimal at best. Why was that punishment done again? I mean, seriously, if you have to choose this punishment, what’s the sense? It becomes completely meaningless!
I’m really lost here, is this a massive whoosh? Wha?
The legality of corporal punishment is left up to the states. California outlaws corporal punishment (CEC 49001 iirc) including picking up paper or standing for 5 minutes because you were tardy. Arizona on the other hands allows C.P. and one teacher makes her students do pushups in the hall. Also, a student that chooses to follow school rules which is no different then you giving up some rights to work at your company.
In theory paddling is a good punishment because it is immediate and is a severe consequence that the student will not want. It also puts the teacher back into the position of authority and takes that away from the student. Detentions are worthless with a student that earns 2-3 a day (they can’t serve them all so what is the consequence?) and calls to parents (assuming you speak their language) takes the consequence out of your control and you are dependent on the authority of the parent which could range from a beating to a grounding to taking away their iPhone for a weekend to not buying them another pair of Jordans to nothing.
That being said, no teacher should ever lay a hand (or a paddle) on a student.
I too am surprised that corporal punishment is allowed in any public school district in the United States. Around these parts, the LAUSD had to log every act of such punishment even from its very beginnings before the Civil War. The first principal of my HS paddled a kid in 1924 or 25, who promptly sued him, but lost.
I think parental spanking (and fraternity type paddling rituals) are different in a significant way from corporal punishment. I don’t think the parent is attempting to inflict maximum pain, but subject the child to a ritualistic embarrassment that is more significant than any actual pain. It’s demeaning to have someone hit you on the backside.
If official corporal punishment is sanctioned, then doesn’t that imply that it’s OK for the students to institute their own corporal punishments on their peers?