I come from the older generation where we didn’t have shootings at school, mass shootings at clubs and gatherings and strict gun laws and the most amazing thing was back in my day mass shootings were extremely rare. Fast forward to today and we have mass shootings several times a year and each time the gun laws get stronger and up to the point of ridiculous yet we have more and more of them each year. What is the difference between now and back then? The answer is simple: PUNISHMENT! Now days if a child is actually punished with something to remember (like a good whipping) for breaking the rules of society or home, the parent may go to jail for making the child realize that bad manner equals physical pain. It’s called a paddling or whipping and is now called physical abuse. Somehow us older people survived up to the 60’s and were not killed by our parents or placed in such a mental state by corporal punishment that we then go out and kill others. The link between bad behavior and pain has forever been broken and now the new generation can reap the rewards.
Back in 1984, me and my family lived in New Zealand and the caning of boys in high school who misbehaved was still legally permitted there. That may have been that good bit cruel, but when I look back at that time, the cane kept a good many of us (including myself) honest.
I remember sharing this here a while back and someone told me that they went to a boys’ Catholic school in Boston in the ‘60s and that the brothers were very nice and decent people but still patrolled the halls with paddles and that you knew that they did not tolerate any kind of horseplay that seems to be so much more commonplace now.