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One time I got in trouble for making kids do push ups for mistakes/bad behavior. This type of physical punishment was pretty common in the world of high school band...certainly I've done my share of pushups or lap running. What made this even more bizarre to me is that the principal made sure to point out that corporal punishment was legal in Missouri. However, the litigious nature of society had the administration worried and while I was assured that my conduct was within the law, I was also strongly advised to cease and desist immediately. With this in mind I'm always especially flabbergasted when I hear that students are still getting paddled in schools. I would have bet money that, in today's society, a 16 year old girl could never be swatted on the butt by a male principal...but...it happened. What do you think about spanking in schools? Would you let your daughter be swatted by a male principal? Would you let her be swatted at all? Let us know what you think. (Reviewed by: Justin Ormsby)
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The way Heidi Drake remembers it, punishment in school never varied.
Caught chewing gum? Swat. Pass a note? Swat. Tardy to class? Swat.
"Mr. K was a legend at my rural Oregon middle school," Drake writes in a piece about parenting and spanking for Yahoo News. "Not because his biology tests were tough or his smiles were rare. It was his paddle we all feared.
Drake, a Sunriver, Ore., mom of
two girls, says that's the key difference between her experience and the
attention-grabbing corporal punishment doled out recently to high-school sophomore Taylor Santos of Fort Worth, Texas.
Santos, who picked paddling by a
male vice principal rather than suffering a two-day in-school suspension
for allowing a classmate to copy her work, took her medicine in
private—something Drake says is ineffective.
Drake rarely resorts to smacking the behind and thinks it's warranted only if it results in humiliation.
She writes: "It's not because the
one swat I received from Mr. K scarred me. (It was for gum, by the
way.) The administrators involved in Santos' case didn't approach
corporal punishment the same way he did. Mr. K went straight for the
teenage jugular by embarrassing us in front of our peers. It did the
trick, and we were still able to return to our hard, wooden seats
afterward."
Did Drake spank?
"Yes," she writes. "When Elise
was 3 and ran into the street, ignoring my screams for her to stop. And
when a quick swat was needed to bring 4-year-old Maya out of a full-on
grocery-store tantrum. In other words, I administered only when the
situation called for it. But I never punished with the intention of
inflicting pain or leaving a mark."
No sparing the spatula
Dr. William Ray Fullmer's mother spanked him. And his father gave his school permission to do so, too.
"I deserved it most of the time,"
he writes, recalling a kitchen junk drawer that housed a spatula
employed to mete out punishment. "When I heard that drawer rattle, I
knew I was in trouble."
But Fullmer, of Dallas, Ore., says he decided years ago he would
never spank his kids in anger—"although there are times when I wanted
to."His parents thought differently: "My father gave my teachers in elementary school a standing order that if need be, they had his consent to spank me. I am sure part of the reason my father authorized spanking was as a deterrent for bad behavior. It worked; for the most part I stayed out of trouble, as I knew they had permission to deal with me as they saw fit."
Keep home and school spanking rules separate
In Moreno Valley, Calif., where
Kathryn Walsh lives, it's illegal for school employees to use corporal
punishment. She writes that she's shocked by the Santos story but more
upset that Mom and daughter gave permission.
Walsh only spanks at home "where the parent has control over the severity of the deed," and it's still a last resort.
"I spanked him on his clothed
behind six times with my bare hand," Walsh says. "I have never used a
paddle or other instrument, nor could I allow another adult to use a
paddle on my sons."
Carol Rucker never resorted to physical punishment.
"I have no regrets," the
Tallahassee, Fla., resident writes. And she thinks schools and parents
should brainstorm more creative ideas. The school failed, she says, in
not offering an alternative like volunteering or extra
homework—"anything other than a man paddling a teenage girl until she
bruises."
Rucker says her years of
parenting and grandparenting have guided her: "I still believe corporal
punishment is violence by another name. Some parents consider it a
necessary form of discipline. Some will even quote the Bible to back
them up; but I believe it teaches a child to use violence as a coping
mechanism. We have enough of that already."
Calvin Wolf, a Texas high-school teacher, says he and his wife spank their son, who turns 5 in a few weeks.
"He is a good kid, the little
guy, but occasionally, like most children, has trouble listening," Wolf
writes. "While some abhor the practice of spanking, or any sort of
corporal punishment, what follows when the kid realizes you're nothing
but talk?"
"Kids need to know that they can be punished sufficiently even if Mom and Dad are not around," Wolf writes.
Timothy Sexton, a Florida father
of two high-school boys, writes that the oddest element in Santos'
spanking is how shocked mom and daughter are at the results of their
choice.
"On those rare occasions when you
get what you ask for in this life," he says, "you should not complain
about what you get when you don't know what it is you are asking for."
No one is smarter after the incident, Sexton says. Not the kid, not the parent, not the vice principal, not the school district.
"My first reaction was that
perhaps things are different in the world of daughters. Then I came to
my senses and realized that much of American society is just plain
oblivious. I personally cannot fathom my own children ever opting to
receive a paddling from any school administrator rather than suspension.
If you torture someone enough, you will get the information you are
looking for regardless of the authenticity. Paddle a student and you
don't even get that. The school gets nothing. The student gets nothing.
Society gets nothing. Talk about a comprehensively vacuous method of
punishment!"
Pennsylvania resident Robert Zharko wants to make sure he's perfectly clear: "The vice principal is lucky I was not this child's parent."
Zharko, the father of a girl, 10,
and a boy, 13, says he worries about the message physical punishment
sends: Does it tell kids that striking someone is OK if you don't find
the behavior acceptable?
"The punishments directed to my
children are swift but always entail an association to the 'crime.' For
example, when my teen rode his ATV without a helmet, he lost his riding
privileges for two weeks. I never thought of striking my 13-year-old
because of it. Never."
"A grown man thought it was
appropriate to paddle a girl," Zharko writes. "The vice principal should
be dismissed (with the blessing of the teacher's union) and the school
investigated. As for the parents of Taylor Santos, they should be
commended; they have maintained considerably more control than this
father would have."
"Paddling" was a common occurrence where and where I went to school. Was it effective? Hard to say. Most of the students who got paddled got it over and over...so for them, no. I knew if I got into trouble at school, no matter what the punishment was, it would be much worse when I got home. My parents didn't hesitate to spank us for a variety of offenses and we turned out okay...I guess. I spanked my son, with my bare hand, when it seemed the only way to get his immediate attention. I don't think he suffered any long-term consequences.
ReplyDeleteIf it is okay by the school have a woman spank the females and male spank the males. But have the same people do it every time. This is embarrassing so most likely kids will not act up.Do punishment in the classroom that the student really can do. If the student happens to have a disability, and it is really truly hard for them to do push-ups, don't make them do it. The best thing to do is consult with the principal to see what you can and cannot do for punishment.
ReplyDeleteJaimie, thanks for chiming in. I would agree with the idea that physical pain or emotional embarrassment might seem like a logical deterrent to abhorrent behavior, but is it really? Consider the previous poster who admitted that many of the kids who were paddled were paddled repeatedly. This would suggest that, at least for some (and by some I mean those who this disciplinary method is used on most frequently) corporal punishment is either not a deterrent or, more cynically, it actually worsens behavior. One could certainly imagine why the latter might be the case. We know that those things that terrify us as a child tend to attract us as an adult. Children with abusive parents often end up in abusive marriages, etc. We also know that children who experience violence tend to themselves become violent. Whether a paddling could be considered a violent action is a matter of conjecture of course.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more important, I think, is not a matter of what you can and cannot do as punishment but rather what you should or should not do. Regardless of school policy regarding corporal punishment I would never personally paddle a student, and if I knew that paddling was a potential punishment I would also be extremely reluctant to turn any discipline problems over to the office.
Spanking is always a bit controversial, in large part because of the potential to base theory on anecdotal evidence (ie I got spanked and I'm just fine. My kid got spanked and he's just fine too!). There are studies which attempt to document and compare the behavioral outcomes of groups of people who were spanked and those who were not spanked although I'll admit that I can't provide you with the data off hand.
What I do think I know is that the situation described in this article would be unacceptable to me if this girl had been my child. I think the mother has a right to be upset.
There are also larger philosophical questions to discuss here such as "why do kids cheat in the first place?" But that is properly for another day.