Girl Spanked in Front of Classmates at High School

Associated Press ^ | February 24, 2004

[wallcrawlr]

CUDAHY, Wis. -- The Cudahy School District has changed its visitation policy for parents after a father spanked his daughter in front of other students in her high school biology class.

``The students were horrified,'' James P. Heiden, the district's director of student services, said of the incident. ``It took everybody by complete surprise.''

Both Cudahy police and the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare have reviewed the case at the school district's request, and neither found basis for child abuse or neglect.

``Obviously it's unusual to have a girl spanked in front of the class, it's highly unusual, but not a police matter, not at this time from the information we received,'' said Cudahy police Sgt. Randy Scheel.

Heiden said the district visitation policy now calls for parents to meet with students only in the office, not a classroom.

The girl's mother, contacted at home Monday evening, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel her daughter ``comes from a very loving family. There's nothing to be concerned about.''

She described the spanking as a misjudgment for which the family apologized to the school. Police said they had no record of prior contact with anyone in the family.

School officials said the girl had disrupted her biology class Feb. 11, leading assistant principal Greg DePue to notify her father when he was at school the next day addressing a situation with another child.

DePue said the father entered the classroom, called his daughter to the front and told her he would not have her disrupting class. He then told the girl to turn around, and spanked her on her bottom, the assistant principal said.

``It was so fast,'' DePue said. ``It just happened.''

[Stone Mountain]

So the father thinks it's okay to physically discipline and humiliate a teenage girl in front of her peers. And this girl is disrupting class. Apparently, the apple doesn't fall far...

[vaudine]

Misjudgement on the father's part. Besides not meting out private punishment, he is now on the radar screen of the human svcs. dept. which can't be good, and might be bad for future reference.

vaudine

[texgal]

I've worked as a substitute at a local high school and junior high school and I can tell you it's bad, especially in the junior high school. Most of the kids who seriously want to learn and go on to college get into advanced placement classes in high school. These are the classes where the kids can get dual high school and college credit if they take the A/P exams before going into college. The lower level classes in math and science are pretty much a joke, the kids know it and take advantage of the situation.

If a teacher has to discipline a child, it's the teacher who gets called in to the principal's office. I've got a friend who teaches 4 sections (25-30 students per section) of regular high school "social studies". After the Christmas break she had 52 students with F's for failure to turn in homework assignments. That's almost half her students. We aren't talking about hard assignments and the kids were given more than one opportunity to turn in their work. She was frantic to try to find a way to pass these kids who REFUSED to turn in their work so she wouldn't have to turn in failing grades for them. She knew if she did there would be complaints from the parents and the administration. SHE would be the one to get in trouble. It's the dumbing down of America folks. The kids didn't worry because they knew that she would have to pass them.

The discipline of children begins with teaching them a belief and reverence for God (something greater than themselves), respect for oneself, respect in the home and respect for others in authority and personal responsibility for one's own actions. These things are obviously absent in many homes throughout our nation.

I never had to spank my child and was never called in to address disciplinary problems regarding my daughter during her whole school career. I will admit that she was an "easy child" who never gave me one minute of trouble. I believe that was, in part, a result of the way that we raised her. She is 21 now and ranked in the top 3% of college students in the country.

While I applaud the father for making the effort to discipline this child, it may too little too late if she reached high school age and still needed to be spanked. There are times when spanking is warranted but the problem with repetitive corporal punishment is that if the child survives the first round it has to be so repugnant that the child will not want to repeat the behavior. If the behavior continues you, as the one administering the punishment, have to make the next punishment worse in order to stop the behavior.

[American_Centurion]

Expressing your opinion is one thing, but much of the criticism here borders on approval of nanny state child-rearing.

Frankly I just wanted you to know that in a free country your opinion on situations like this means squat.

[optimistically_conservative]

make that two.

my pop would have figured if I felt I could embarrass myself in class being a jerk, I wouldn't mind if he embarrassed me in class straightening me out.

if I didn't want to be embarrassed in class by my dad, I should embarrass myself acting like a jerk.

[TexasCajun]

Man, I thought my parents were embarrassing.

It doesn't sound like much of spanking from they way they descibe it. It was more a message than anything.

Dad was telling her, "Pull this crap again, make me come to this school again, and I'll spank you in front of your friends again!" Ouch!

[stanz]

What he did doesn't teach humility- - -that's the whole point.

[GigaDittos]

Listen. /sarcasm

[BOOTSTICK]

Humiliation is a great motivator.

[stanz]

Realplayer could not locate the clip. Sorry.

[stanz]

See my post #68. There are lots of ways to punish.

[Stone Mountain]

IMO important point most are missing, unless this kid is physically harmed (abused) then whatever he did do his daughter is none of your freaking business whatsoever.His kid, his rules, everyone else butt the hell out.

You're saying that we shouldn't be commenting on an article that is posted on FR? It's not like we're advocating going up to this guy and telling him how to raise his kid. What is the point of having a news forum if we don't discuss these types of issues? Are we "butting in" merely by expressing our opinions on a public forum?

[TexasCajun]

``The students were horrified,''

I bet they were!! Most have never felt the sting of the bare hand or leather belt across the buttocks. ...or the horror of having your parent come into your classroom for any reason.

[American_Centurion]

Maybe not, but the way some here are calling the father names indicates to me that they would support state intervention for simply disciplining his child.

How does one know this father isn't a Freeper? IMO it is extremely bad form to criticise any parents technique barring outright abuse.

[southern bale]

this strikes me (pun intended) as classic "do as i say, not as i do" ... the child disrupts the class and then the dad punishes the child by disrupting the class ...

[rogueleader]

Want to permanently ruin your relationship with your child?

Humiliate them. Treat them like dirt. That's a good start.

[cmsgop]

LOL!

[blowfish]

Frankly I just wanted you to know that in a free country your opinion on situations like this means squat.

That would hold true for about 99.9% of the posts on FreeRepublic. They're just expressions of opinion.

Expressing your opinion is one thing, but much of the criticism here borders on approval of nanny state child-rearing.

And luckily we now have a posting-watchdog to tell us when we should STFU. How nice.