# Should this man be allowed in the classroom? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 10, 2005, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803 "2005-03-10T07:19:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![50million](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/5/9fc348/32.png) [@50million](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/50million)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803/41 "2005-03-11T04:28:25Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > Can you elaborate on that? > > Agreed. From the NYT article, “He said he had been a disruptive student, and routinely mouthed off until his fourth-grade teacher finally gave him three whacks to the backside.” He was hit, now he wants to be a hitter. A vicious cycle, but stupid and inexcusable non-the-less. ---
**Author:** ![zagloba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@zagloba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zagloba)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803/42 "2005-03-11T08:41:38Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > If I were kicked out of school for writing an A paper I would fight tooth and nail to be reinstated. The situation is absurd. Clearly the standards of the program that gave him the A are different from those of the program which has refused to admit him. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803/43 "2005-03-11T08:45:47Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > Whether or not he supports corporal punishment, it is witless to assume that he \*would actually do \* _so_ if it is not allowed in whatever school district he might work for. It’s like I said before: the school is covering itself. I don’t admire that, but there’s so much of that going on in schools of all levels these days that I can’t be surprised. I have nothing more to go on than the article, but if they’ve pledged to turn out effective teachers, I think they just got rid of somebody who wasn’t/isn’t going to be one. I think his disciplinarian attitude is ridiculous and I think his quotes indicate he’s out of touch with reality. > [@](#): > > For goodness sake, he wrote an A paper and got bounced for it! Does this not seem a little strange to you? It means he probably wrote well and supported his case. Why does that matter? He wasn’t punished for making his argument well. It’s the position he took and the ramifications it could have on his students that is at issue. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803/44 "2005-03-11T13:58:06Z")
> [@Stonebow](#): > > Not necessarily on topic, but i thought you’d all like to know as an aside that corporeal punishment is still the norm in every District in Arkansas, :: tries really hard to give up stereotypes of Arkansas :: :: finds Stonebow’s statement has managed to strengthen them instead :: > [@butler1850](#): > > I’d say (extreme, abuse situations excluded) that most kids need a good swift smack on the ass. It’d likely make less of the current crop of disrespectful punk kids that seem to be turning up now a days. You know, I’m pretty sure there’s a quote somewhere in which Socrates bemoans how much worse children are then they were when _he_ was one. If you think hitting kids resulted in a generation of well-behaved youngsters rather than the ones you see today, then I gotta say - cite? Because it’s not true. Every generation says that once they get into their declining years; if every generation of children really was worse then the last, then society wouldn’t have progressed the way it has. > [@Twoflower](#): > > Any teacher with decent classroom management skills should have no need of, or interest in, physical punishment. An effective teacher is respected in the classroom, not feared. The guy is clearly not cut out for teaching. The school certainly has a right, or even an obligation, to assure that its graudates will be competent teachers. Exactly. I’m young enough to remember elementary school. The teachers who were well-liked and well-respected didn’t have behavioral problems in their classrooms. The teachers that were mean or cranky (and probably ones who would have liked to use corporal punishment) could hardly have maintained order over a quilting circle. > [@Contrapuntal](#): > > For goodness sake, he wrote an A paper and got bounced for it! Does this not seem a little strange to you? According to the article, “the assignment sought Mr. McConnell’s plan for managing a classroom.” His plan for managing a classroom involved corporal punishment. He explicitly acknowledged his plans to hit kids. He apparently also dislikes “anti-American multiculturalism” and ridiculed a book because it contained a message about not teasing Muslim children. Yeah, the dude’s a real winner, no doubt about it. This is not about punishing him. It’s about recognizing that he does not have the temperament or the personality traits required to teach. An 11-year-old child swore at him, and he became - well - unhinged; he followed it up by writing a paper that would get him expelled from school. This over being cussed at by a sixth grader. Sorry, he’s just not got a rational temperament. I must say, I feel uncomfortable about this attitude (I run into it a lot here on the SDMB) that ones beliefs are irrelevant, and people should be able to express them freely with no fear of consequences. The government has no business regulating folks’ beliefs, but it’s at best very ingenuous to believe that someone can hold a set of beliefs - one that, increasingly, is recognized as wrongheaded - while their actions are in no way affected. It’s not likely that the guy will hit kids. But if this is his approach to disciplining them, it seems quite likely that he will run an authoritarian classroom, that he will not be tolerant of “dissent” among his students, and that he doesn’t have an appreciation for effective methods of discipline. I saw this when I was in elementary school. Hell, my fourth grade teacher was known to grab students by their collars and shake them. He had a very strict, very authoritarian set of classroom rules. And it doesn’t matter that much exactly what the punishment is - writing sentences or getting your ass paddled. Either way, it’s an ineffective way to manage a classroom, and it’s not one that should be permitted into schools. Mr. Parks’ own use of physical methods to discipline students accompanied an authoritarian style; from the guy in the article’s own quotes, you can see he has that authoritarian style in spades. He simply won’t be an effective teacher, and it’s the height of relativist stupidity to cover our eyes and pretend we can’t tell what’s going on, and stick him in a classroom to educate kids when he obviously just can’t do it. So yeah, it’s bizarre that he got an A-minus on that paper when his plan for managing a classroom involves hitting kids. Quite bizarre indeed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-this-man-be-allowed-in-the-classroom/293803.md?page=2)