When I was in third grade I did something (I forget what now) that got me hauled up to the front of the class where Mrs. Smithson paddled me with a large, thick wooden paddle. She didn’t do it hard enough and when I sat down the kid next to me grinned and I snickered. Mrs. Smithson was a large German woman and she walked over to me and cracked me across the face 2-3 times. My jaw hurt for a week.
These days she would go to jail. Even then she was pushing it. But she did it out of concern for me and the learning environment in the classroom not out of ego - even in the 3rd grade I could tell the difference. I was a spoiled little monster hippie kid and it was an excellent life lesson.
When half the people on this forum, who call themselves conservative, start whining about some kind being shamed you know we have No Hope.
If the people who love us do not discipline us then life will. Or if life is artificially cushy like in the Western democracies then we will breed communists who demand that the people who are not perpetual screw ups and actually contribute to society give them more. And more.
Reading these responses is depressing. We are calling the four horsemen and will have no one to blame but ourselves.
I was a lousy student until I joined the USN.
I needed discipline as well as direction.
I was a good kid but I was a smart ass.
I'm not quite clear on the value of publicly shaming a third grader -- this particular case may be evidence of a poor decision on the teacher's part. My gut feeling is that the teacher was right, but I'm not sure.
But overall, I agree that society is far too cushy. We're too nice, too soft. We have too much "stuff". Our values and our morality are all out the window because we do not insist on self-control, on discipline, on ethical behavior, personal integrity, and on productive, useful work.
We see a teacher not disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We see a teacher disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We are lost. As a society, we seem to have no answers to any of the important questions.