I'm ready for a debate.... to paddle or not to paddle

[Rosie the Riveter]

Another reason to hate government schools...they beat your kids for you...

"The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas."


In Many Public Schools, the Paddle Is No Relic
Saturday, September 30, 2006
New York Times
By RICK LYMAN
EVERMAN, Tex. ? Anthony Price does not mince words when talking about corporal punishment ? which he refers to as taking pops ? a practice he recently reinstated at the suburban Fort Worth middle school where he is principal.

Mark Graham for The New York Times
Tina Morgan did not object to corporal punishment until she saw the bruises when her son, Travis, 12, was paddled in Robeson County, N.C.
?I?m a big fan,? Mr. Price said. ?I know it can be abused. But if used properly, along with other punishments, a few pops can help turn a school around. It?s had a huge effect here.?

Tina Morgan, who works on a highway crew in rural North Carolina, gave permission for her son to be paddled in his North Carolina middle school. But she said she was unprepared for Travis, now 12, to come home with a backside that was a florid kaleidoscope of plums and lemons and blood oranges.

?This boy might need a blistering now and then, with his knucklehead,? Ms. Morgan said, swatting at him playfully, but she added that she never wanted him to be beaten like that. ?I?ve decided, we?ve got to get corporal punishment out of the schools.?

Over most of the country and in all but a few major metropolitan areas, corporal punishment has been on a gradual but steady decline since the 1970?s, and 28 states have banned it. But the practice remains alive, particularly in rural parts of the South and the lower Midwest, where it is not only legal, but also widely practiced.

In a handful of districts, like the one here in Everman, there have been recent moves to reinstate it, some successful, more not. In Delaware, a bill to rescind that state?s ban on paddling never got through the legislature. But in Pike County, Ohio, corporal punishment was reinstated last year. And in southeast Mississippi, the Laurel school board voted in August to reinstate a corporal punishment policy, passing one that bars men from paddling women, but does not require parental consent, as many other policies do.

The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.

Often the battle over corporal punishment is being fought on the edges of Southern cities, where suburban growth pushes newcomers from across the country into rural and religiously conservative communities. In these areas, educators say, corporal punishment is far more accepted, resulting in clashing attitudes about child-rearing and using the rod.

?I couldn?t believe it when I learned about it,? said Peggy Dean, a mother of three students in Union County, N.C., a rapidly growing suburb south of Charlotte. ?If I?d known, I?d never have moved into this school district.?

As views of child-rearing have changed, groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of School Psychologists and the American Medical and Bar Associations have come out against corporal punishment.

?I believe we have reached the point in our social evolution where this is no longer acceptable, just as we reached a point in the last half of the 19th century where husbands using corporal punishment on their wives was no longer acceptable,? said Murray Straus, a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.


more at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/education/30punish.html?ref=education

[Otosan]

Shoot, if I had a nickel for every swat of the paddle I got,  I would be as rish as Bill Gates.

Today instead of the paddle it is medication. 


There is a thin line between discipline and abuse what is it I do not know.

I always gave them three chances;
First I would explain their error and tell them not to do it again.
Second I would tan their hides (But I always used the three hit rule (more than three I was out of control) and never to the head.)
And the third time I told them I would kill them....never got to #3   

Ya have to discipline them to let them know who is in control and try to show them right from wrong.

[Dreepa]

I have yet to hit my kids.
I just count to 3.
I never seem to get past 2.
They have yet to ask me what happens when I get to 3 ( I need to figure that out before I actually make it to 3).

[Rosie the Riveter]

I have yet to hit my kids.
I just count to 3.
I never seem to get past 2.
They have yet to ask me what happens when I get to 3 ( I need to figure that out before I actually make it to 3).

I also count I never seem to get past 2 either. The few times I have reached 3 -- I do take away things like the computer, phone, toys, etc rather than spank. It seems much more effective. We have a no hitting policy in our house that applies to children and adults.

[Rosie the Riveter]

Shoot, if I had a nickel for every swat of the paddle I got,  I would be as rish as Bill Gates.

Today instead of the paddle it is medication. 


There is a thin line between discipline and abuse what is it I do not know.

I always gave them three chances;
First I would explain their error and tell them not to do it again.
Second I would tan their hides (But I always used the three hit rule (more than three I was out of control) and never to the head.)
And the third time I told them I would kill them....never got to #3   

Ya have to discipline them to let them know who is in control and try to show them right from wrong.

I hope you will answer, as I have always wondered, how do you teach them not to hit each other or you, when it is ok for you to hit them?

[FrankChodorov]

I have a 10 year old who has never had to be "disciplined".

[Rosie the Riveter]

I have a 10 year old who has never had to be "disciplined".

Do you find that your child cooperates and understands your requests because you have a good relationship?

[FrankChodorov]

I have a 10 year old who has never had to be "disciplined".

Do you find that your child cooperates and understands your requests because you have a good realationship?

I just think he takes after his mother who was never disciplined either...kind of an unusual kid.

we are still pre-teen though and he is a boy - stay tuned.

he has wisdom beyind his years.

[Dreepa]

he has wisdom beyind his years.

He must be like his father!

[David]

I don't have children, but I study human nature.  Proper justice isn't to control people, but rather force those who hurt people to make just restitution for their actions. 
But children are not adults.  How do you apply adult rules to impulsive irresponsibe persons?  Particularly with young children.
Than I watched the tv show Supernanny.  That woman was amazing.  Never hit the child, but would restrain a hurtful and aggressive child. 
Yes, it was undoubtably edited, but it was still neat. 

[Rosie the Riveter]

I don't have children, but I study human nature.  Proper justice isn't to control people, but rather force those who hurt people to make just restitution for their actions. 
But children are not adults.  How do you apply adult rules to impulsive irresponsibe persons?  Particularly with young children.
Than I watched the tv show Supernanny.  That woman was amazing.  Never hit the child, but would restrain a hurtful and aggressive child. 
Yes, it was undoubtably edited, but it was still neat. 

In my experience, children are not irresponsible, yes maybe impulsive, but not naturally irresponsible. Truly it is our job as parents to guide rather than push and to encourage rather than force, but I will admit that this is something that is done from birth and is difficult to repair once gone awry. Children when spoken to in a respectful way usually cooperate. I found the book "How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk" Faber -- to be a life changing read. 

Empathy, honestly and relationship are the keys to resonsible children who take ownership of their actions.

Kate

[Fluff and Stuff]

Guess what, it hardly hurts and a lot of kids want to get paddled because it is best than staying after school with detention.  Yes, when I was given the option, I selected the paddle and it was no big deal.

[FrankChodorov]

Guess what, it hardly hurts and a lot of kids want to get paddled because it is best than staying after school with detention.  Yes, when I was given the option, I selected the paddle and it was no big deal.

all paddling teaches is that might makes right...

[Fluff and Stuff]

Guess what, it hardly hurts and a lot of kids want to get paddled because it is best than staying after school with detention.  Yes, when I was given the option, I selected the paddle and it was no big deal.

all paddling teaches is that might makes right...

It taught me that you could do bad things and not even get punished.

[Minsk]

More critically: Children are almost universally humiliated and threatened into blind obedience to their parents/church/school/state. Given all that abuse, whether or not the arbitrary punishment involves a paddle, a hand, a detention, or a humiliating lecture is pretty bloody irrelevent. At risk of abusing a metaphor, let's stop fiddling with the trunk and do something about the elephant.

How about we teach parents how to raise children without bludgeoning them into submission? And educators how to deal without students without needing to dominate them? (And reform church and state, but that's a different issue entirely)

So heck yeah, I'm against paddling. But more importantly, I'm against any environment that leads to an authority figure "needing" to dominate and humiliate a child.