Posted on 05/20/2002 9:54:04 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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Schools, Kids and Whippings
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Because of the lack of discipline among school kids these days, some folks honestly believe that bringing back classroom "whuppins" is going to solve the problems created by parental failure, "easy" ways out of personal responsibility, federalized education where the agenda overrides parental authority, where schools blacklist "problem" parents who are, for the most part, those who disagree with flaky school policies, and a great deal of federally-sponsored racial bias. To which I say, bullschwacky! Okay so I don't have kids of my own, but I had two parents, a war-zone home, and I have friends who do have kids. Discipline begins at home. Respect for authority begins at home. The knowledge of right and wrong begins at home. Instruction about the value of a good education begins at home. In fact, life begins at home! No whuppins at any school will instill in any child the values that parents fail to teach or teach properly. It might make for more dropouts, runaways and resentment, including a few more school shootings or other acts of violence, because we're living in a violent era that didn't exist when I was growing up. Oh yes, some violence has always existed ... but not on the scale we see it now. Today's headlines injected onto a 1950's front page of a city newspaper would cause collective cardiac arrest. Letting federalized teachers whip the daylights out of kids in school because they have religious beliefs opposed to certain teachings in the schools might make more drones for the Great Senseless Society, but it won't produce better kids and it will not enhance education. It won't stop school violence but it may increase it. My mother and her siblings grew up in an environment where grandpa "ran the home" and he used a double razor strop to whip his frail daughters and one son. When granny tried to intercede on behalf of the kids to talk to them, grandpa would threaten her with "stay out of this, Emma, or else." That isn't being the man of the house ... it's being a brute. (As a side note, once granny got over being intimidated, she gave him "hail columbia" for the rest of his living days and told him over and over "I was too young and dumb to know I'd married a crazy man." She gave no quarter and spared no insult, but she did stay married. When he died, she shed no tears.) My mother was dead-set against corporal punishment as the standard way of training children. She felt there were times it was needed, and I got a few wooden coathangers swatted across my back, but from as far back as any memories exist, mom first tried talking to me, then if I didn't get the point, she was good at intimidation. My dad didn't like me, my mother knew it, and would not let him lay a hand on me. Once, when I was 14, mama and I were having a somewhat heated discussion, and without warning he interfered long enough to backhand me across the jaw and send all 103 pounds of me sprawling across the living room floor and into a chair. Of course, this is the same dad who dumped mom and me in Arizona when I was in my early 20's, demanded a divorce, and went about his womanizing and the booze my mother wouldn't let him drink. The school issue was never a concern when it came to corporal punishment. I went to California private schools, was a good student, corporal punishment was not applied. Rather, the headmistress of the school sent for the parents for a "conference" when the kids were a problem. At least I didn't have to be terrified of school ... and I do not like to be hit. There are some kids that people feel like blistering until they cannot sit down for a week, I've met them all through life, but look into their homes and generally the problem is readily discernible. Delinquent parents. Or just plain mean parents like my dad and my grandpa. Bringing back corporal punishment into federalized schools allows for all sorts of options for teacher abuse. Race bias is one of them, and it exists. It also exists in the workplace, as I found out all too soon when I went to work for the State of Arizona in 1992 where Hispanics were favored. I have no doubt that kids whose parents are trying to bring them up with values of abstinence, a drug-free life, belief in God, and respect for proper authority would meet with some federalized teachers who would beat the daylights out of them at the slightest mention of any of these precepts. We're also talking about the same federalized system that calls it a crime in some states for parents to discipline their kids with a swat on the behind when they act up in the store. Neither the school nor the government have the job of parenting children, and the parents of this nation should make sure they never do, because they are trying to do just that. Now, before I start sounding like I've gone soft-headed on bringing up kids, I am a believer in discipline beginning at the earliest age. This idea that kids need to get in touch with their inner selves and be given free reign for all sorts of acting-out is nonsense only a new-age society would promote. Any parent with that philosophy isn't fit to bring up children anyway, and that seems to be the way "Taliban John" Lindh was allowed to express himself. Advice from the Spock of Star Trek would be better than the advice Dr. Spock gave in the 60's about how to let kids run wild and grow up without any respect for authority. However, as nearly as I can tell from the reports that I receive from folks who have kids attending highly federalized schools and their battle to keep the kids from calling 911 at the slightest hint of discipline (where did kids five and six learn about that?) -- the first place to begin with corporal punishment is with delinquent parents, and the second place is with leftist teachers who instruct kids on their "rights" against home discipline. Originally, public schools were there to educate children in specific courses such as language, spelling, arithmetic, history, civics, and other "school" subjects to prepare them for either college or the workplace. All other child-rearing was to be done at home. Living day in and day out in any home environment will, intentionally or unintentionally, transfer to the children the values modeled in the home. That's how we got the welfare dynasties. The values of society as reflected in the neighborhood in which kids are brought up will also transfer, which is why so many thoughtful parents today are trying to get out of the city and into areas where they can keep a closer eye on the kids, their friends, and what's being taught at school. When we can't trust our government with our immigration policies, our Bill of Rights or even our Constitution, should we trust them with the children? I would say at this point the statement of former president Ronald Reagan applies to the highest degree: "government is not the solution to the problem, government IS the problem." Amen?
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I said assault. Please don't slip down to the lowest denominator. It's beneath you.
You need another mirror, Alice.
This should also be beneath you.
If you want to make the wager, do it, otherwise you are just listening to yourself talk.
Bump for self responsibility and common sense.
A paddling is no big deal except to the kids who know they might get one. I would rather a child be paddled then sent home to an empty house where he can watch TV all day. Some punishment.
Get your money up (a letter of guarantee from a major bank will do) and we will each show our respective evidence to an unbiased arbitrator. You can bring your "evidence". You say my kids have been assaulted, you have to prove it. No one can be asked to prove a negative, it's an old trick, but it won't work.
Spanking worked at home and in schools for decades. Liberals and liberaltarians don't understand the concept that strong punishment deters inappropriate or illegal behavior.
You don't get to make that choice for other people's children.
You sure do, in a Village.
Crack the knuckles of those little punks!
"Properly" is the key word here. Touching my children physically is improper in that it violates their rights and mine. The person who violates their right to be secure in their persons will find out what the penalty for that is.
Putting them in timeout or detention halls is a worthless punishment.
That is your opinion, and it might even be true in whatever crappy schools your children attend. You have a right to send them where ever you choose.
Spanking worked at home and in schools for decades.
Spanking at home is not the topic of this thread. Physical violation by government employees is. This thread isn't even about private education.
Liberals and liberaltarians don't understand the concept that strong punishment deters inappropriate or illegal behavior.
I can't speak for either of the two groups you mention (off topic in any case) but I understand, and the person who physically violates my children will quickly learn the concept that strong punishment will be in store for them.
I knew you would see the silliness of that path.
Where you got the idea that I don't believe in punishment is anyone's guess. This thread is about Physical punishment by government employees on children who's parents do not have the choice of private education.
You're not at home in the evening to discipline your child if need be?
And many parents will not discipline their children and MY kids have to live with the little terrors.
No, many parents will not discipline their children but you do not have the right to tell parents to accept someone other than themselves hitting their children. What you do have the right to do is remove your child and place him or her in a private school if the school where you child attends does not adequately handle behavioral problems with its students.
I would rather a child be paddled then sent home to an empty house where he can watch TV all day. Some punishment.
Why the jump from being whacked by a stranger to virtually no punishment at all in an empty home? Are you saying the only alternative to not hitting a student is to send them home to a house with no parent in it? That makes no sense.
Children are always testing the limits of acceptable behavior. They, on a deep non-conscious level, want and desire limits... the feeling that someone is watching and guiding them with loving care.
Kids respond to different things, so I'm not a "beat them all" guy. But if sweet reason isn't working and the kid knows that the worst thing that will happen is an ineffectual note back to dithering, hand-wringing parents, then the teachers lose all authority with that kid. There's been a few in my fiancee's classroom that the best she could hope for is if they just slept through class.
General statement, hard to discern the meaning because of the lack of context.
I reserve the right to crack the knuckles of my children. I cede that right to no one.
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