Here’s an interesting article on parents who use corporal punishment in order to discipline their children. Instead of looking at the psychological affects on the child, it looks at the psychological and “addictive” affects on the parent.
But parents keep on hitting. Why? The key is corporal punishment’s temporary effectiveness in stopping a behavior. It does work—for a moment, anyway. The direct experience of that momentary pause in misbehavior has a powerful effect, conditioning the parent to hit again next time to achieve that jolt of fleeting success and blinding the parent to the long-term failure of hitting to improve behavior. The research consistently shows that the unwanted behavior will return at the same rate as before. But parents believe that corporal punishment works, and they are further encouraged in that belief by feeling that they have a right and even a duty to punish as harshly as necessary.
My parents very much believed in corporal punishment. In fact, I love the scene from Mommie Dearest with the wire coat hangers because it gives me slight vindication thinking that my mother’s proclivity to hit me with wire coat hangers is considered so bad that it’s the most crucial scene in a film about abuse. Does that make me weird?
Spanking children is not only appropriate but indicated.
It works, and the child is harmed for life when uncorrected.
Removing “swats” from the principals office has resulted in criminalizing trivial misbehavior by students.
This article is irrational social engineering undermining parenting and our society.
Therefore I disagree with the article and the social engineering behind it.
The article uses science, you use your prejudices. I know which one I believe.
Odd you should refer to science.
In medical school in 1975 gastric ulcer was caused by several things, but not infectious agents. It was written in stone, in spite of the fact many of the epidemiological characteristics of
an infectious agent were present.
Today H. pylori is known to cause some if not most gastric ulcer disease.
That is real science- it was written in stone- but it was wrong, and it eventually changed.
Your article is not a hard science, but if hard science rules were applied to this social philosophy, it would not stand at all, in fact it would be contra-indicated.
Check back at another pseudo science in another field- transformational grammar- which was another, pretense of science. It was a disaster, did not work, and marred the grammar of a generation.
The examples of real science and pseudo-science mistaken theories are vast and broad.
Thousands of years of success vs a few years of a radical alternative.
The thousands of years worked. The few years of alternative “truth” has not.
The topic aside: from your answer I encourage you to consider your own prejudice of accepting anything presented as “science” science, and that even real hard science is infallible and correct in every respect.
One way to address your faith, uncritical and without reservation, in what you read is to actively seek out the fundamentals of propaganda, a very significant factor in our nation today, so you actively question- who, what, where, when, why did some radical social change in values and norms take place, is this material reliable, does it have an agenda, is it honestly reported, and above all does it work.
This causes you to look into all matters more deeply, is enjoyable, and particularly in the areas of sociology and psychology is highly indicated.
What I find really interesting about this debate is all the opinions that override the professionals who have devoted lifetimes of study to this subject. Also, I’m always a little creeped out at how angry spankers get when presented with reasons for other options. I never felt that way. I am open minded and like to study both sides of an issue. I spanked my older kids, I don’t spank my youngest and there is a huge difference in our relationship and particularly his self-esteem and the way he interacts with people in general.
There is a study by the Center for Effective Discipline called Fact vs. Opinion: School Corporal Punishment. It is based on statistics from the Dept. of Education.
A few facts are:
Studies show significantly more fatal school shootings took place in states that allow corporal punishment in schools.
The decline of paddling in U.S. public schools is correlated with a decline in violence against teachers.
Non-paddling states have higher ACT scores and higher graduation rates.
School corporal punishment is associated with higher incarceration rates of the adult population. Eight of the top ten paddling states are in the top ten states with the highest incarceration rates.
The study is here in more detail: (http://www.stophitting.com/disatschool/fact-vs-opinion-school-corporal-punishment.php)
Besides all the professional organizations which oppose corporal punishment. List too long to post here. Here’s the link (http://www.stophitting.com/disatschool/usorgs.php)
More than half the states in this country do not paddle kids at school. They have very successful positive discipline programs.
Also, there are teachers who promote paddling for elementary age students age 4+. The way they write about the paddlings in such detail ( a ten yr old begging not to be paddled,) and with complete lack of empathy makes me fear for the children in their charge. Their blogroll links to a site spankwithlove whose logo is a photo of a naked child’s buttocks with a heart around it. These are teachers who don’t want to give up their paddles and want parents to embrace their classroom paddling as well:
(http://teacherswhopaddle.wordpress.com/)
I can’t resist jumping in here to respond to batguano’s statement that transformational grammar “was a disaster, did not work, and marred the grammar of a generation.” I’m not an expert on the subject, but I did study linguistics, and that statement makes no sense to me.
Transformational grammar is a model for describing a theoretical system of rules that could produce the grammar that people use unconsciously when they speak their native language. It is one way that linguists have tried to understand what the underlying rules are that are common to all languages, in spite of their differences. What are the rules that govern case endings, for instance – why do English speakers only change the case of personal pronouns (sometimes using the word “I”, sometimes “me”, for instance) while other languages do the same for all nouns?
Like any such inquiry, the ideas of transformational grammar have been modified over time, and completely rejected by some linguists. So perhaps some people would agree that it “didn’t work”, although calling it a “disaster” seems a bit extreme.
But I’m perplexed by how such an attempt at discovering the underlying rules of language could have, as batguano says “marred the grammar of a generation”. That’s like saying that attempts to describe the creb cycle “marred the digestion of a generation.”
Nifty
beresh- You sound like a true believer, even to the point of black is white and white is black.
You do not address anything I said in support of the importance of spanking in children growing up.
So I will address your statements:
1. “Studies show significantly more fatal school shootings took place in states that allow corporal punishment in schools.”
Before the recent no corporal punishment is schools fatal shootings would extremely rare if they existed at all.
Giving plenty of space to the no corporal punishment of the last couple of decades at most, take 1966 when it was used universally- how many school shootings took place? How many school shootings took place in states where guns were commonly carried in pickup trucks and parked on school property going back to the 1920′s? How many shootings took place in public schools going back to the colonial period from 1966, remember corporal punishment was universal or nearly so.
Examine Catholic schools where corporal punishment even included a form of “caning”, sticking the pupil with a rod in the classroom while in their seat as instant punishment for misbehavior. How many fatal shootings took place in Catholic schools from 1966 back to colonial times?
If you examine school shootings looking at it from the opposite direction, they began after swats were removed from the school.
2. “The decline of paddling in U.S. public schools is correlated with a decline in violence against teachers.”
Prior to removing paddling in US public schools going back to the Revolutionary War, violence against teachers was very rare, rape of teachers so rare as to be extremely noteworthy.
Violence against teachers over the US is a recent phenomenon in our history, again correlating in general with recent trends in educational theory away from previous standards.
Is there a causative relationship between altered educational philosophy and the beginning of violence in the classroom?
3. “Non-paddling states have higher ACT scores and higher graduation rates.”
All states paddled in 1966. Is there a higher ACT score and graduation rate today without paddling than in 1966?
1956?
4. “School corporal punishment is associated with higher incarceration rates of the adult population. Eight of the top ten paddling states are in the top ten states with the highest incarceration rates.”
Are more students incarcerated later in life today than in 1966? 1956?
For your statement to have validity that would have to be true.
If there are more being incarcerated today that before paddling was taken from the schools, would removal of paddling be a causative factor?
Be honest.
You are quoting cooked statistics, ignoring the entire history of education in the USA to support a theory that is currently popular.
I do not imply you cooked the numbers, only that those who are on this particular band wagon did in fact cook them to point where they wished.
Statistics are no better than the methods used, just as surveys.
If someone intentionally tries to support any given proposition, they may do so until the methods are examined.
In the case of the statistics you cite a very recent time span has to be used, and because that is being biased, I have to question even their validity for that recent period.
Parents- Parents have spanked their children for nothing short of thousands of years.
You have to ask yourself why did it work before for such a vast part of recorded history, and yet in only 15 or 20 years, suddenly it not only does not work, all those who came before us should have been harmed, incarcerated at a higher rate, shot more people to death in schools than today.
beresh- I do not doubt your sincerity of belief at all.
I do suspect you have been sold a bill of goods and have bought into them completely.
What if all the people in the history of the United States, indeed the history of the world, who did spank their children, and schools that did use corporal punishment (swats) where not wrong?
And one step further- Why are we having mass killings in schools today that never took place before as now?
These are things to consider.
One thing that is very interesting is to read the writings of previous teachers at any time period in US history, students writings from our history, look at the standard texts of public schools over our history.
Compare the prose of the general population in letters from the Civil War to today.
Compare the prose of the general population with a public school education in 1900 to today.
Take your time, try it when convenient.
……..
lolar-
Prior to transformational grammar very simple strait forward and brief grammar books were the norm. Students who simply memorized the book had very good grammar the rest of their lives. Transformational grammar was a disaster, and decreased the general ability to use the language. It has not been purged completely, therefore it has not been overcome yet.
I have to say that while I’m not convinced by the article I originally linked to, I have read nothing from batguano101 that has convinced me that corporal punishment is good.
For one thing batguano101 makes huge ultimate statements without providing convincing facts to back them up. As for correlative arguments, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has shown a wealth of correlations but that doesn’t mean I believe in it.
daranee-
To me it is just a question of does the last 15 or 20 years philosophy work better than all recorded history before?
Works or does not work?
To me it does not seem to work.
And your statistics do not appear to be even close to valid.
Stay tuned. If mass murder in school continue at the current rate, you might want to rethink the issue. They did not exist before this philosophy.
It seems to me that your basic argument is that things were better in 1966 and earlier than they are today, possibly because of paddling in schools.
I wasn’t born in 1966 or before, but from what I’ve read it doesn’t look so great. Intolerant (everybody expected to look and act the same), rascist (Jim Crow), sexist (women expected to be home makers whether it made them happy or not), regimented and repressed. Lots of scared people pretending that they are not different in any way shape or form.
That’s how it looks to me, but I wasn’t there. However there are people who I trust that were alive then, my parents. And they have told me that the 1950′s were awful, and that I am very lucky to have been born when I was.
If ending paddling was what made things change since 1966 then in my view that makes it a good thing.
I also find it amusing that you complain so much about the grammar of kids today, and yet you include the following gem in your comment:
“Before the recent no corporal punishment is schools fatal shootings would extremely rare if they existed at all.”
equal
I have made observations, you have drawn your conclusions. The statistics stated above are opposite to history.
But well done on the critical review of my remarks- that is the spirit.
Distinguishing between racism, sexism, regimentation or other generalizations vs school shootings, physical assaults, rapes, armed robbery, gangs, is not comparing the same thing.
I was alive in the 50′s and 60′s and for all their problems the most serious problems in schools where I grew up were putting gum under the desk top and talking in class.
Gum and talking in class vs mass murder and rapes?
Draw your own conclusions but be critical and specific in your reading, thoughtful, reasoned, and seek the truth.
The hardest prejudices to identify are your own.
Good luck.
I see what you are saying about separating school behavior from the larger changes in society but I don’t agree. School shapes young people who then become members of society, and I don’t think the 2 can be fully distinguished.
Thanks for your thoughts.
i think corporal punishment should be allowed back in schools in scotland, i have several reasons why i would like to bring it back:
- would improve the behaviour in schools.
- the teachers would be respected more,
weed bee feerd oh thum.
spank thum back