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Authorities are investigating a Florida principal who was seen on camera paddling a student for damaging a computer. WINK reports the child’s mother recorded the video of Central Elementary School Principal Melissa Carter. It reportedly happened April 13. WINK reports the school called the 6-year-old girl’s mother saying she’d damaged a computer and that there would be a $50 fee. The mother went to the school to pay the fee and was taken to the principal’s office. Her daughter, the principal and a school clerk were in the room. The mother said she began to get nervous, so she hit...

The US government has banned an electric shock machine that is used to zap children and young adults with special needs in a school outside Boston – the only institution in the world known to practice the controversial punishment “treatment”. Sanders shifts focus to Michigan as Warren drops out – as it happened Read more The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken the extremely rare move of imposing a total ban on the production and use of the electric shock machines, known as electrical stimulation devices. It said the ban – only the third such comprehensive prohibition of...

Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.” Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been...

The federal government has cast a spotlight on corporal punishment in schools this year. Updated statistics came out this summer, and Education Secretary John B. King Jr. chose as one of his final moves to urge Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, Education Superintendent John White and the leaders of 21 other states to ban paddling Nov. 22. Though all districts in metro New Orleans have abolished the practice, it's still strikingly common statewide: More than 1 in 5 Louisiana schools paddled students in the 2013-14 school year, according to federal data.Look up the schools in our database.Nationally, corporal punishment is...

Education Secretary John B. King Jr. is urging governors and school leaders in states that allow student paddling to end a practice he said would be considered “criminal assault or battery” against an adult. King released a letter Tuesday asking leaders to replace corporal punishment with less punitive, more supportive disciplinary practices that he said work better against bad behavior. More than 110,000 students, including disproportionate numbers of black and disabled students, were subjected to paddling or a similar punishment in the 2013-14 school year, said King, citing the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection. Corporal punishment is legal in...

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of Twitter posts. Al-Watan online daily said Saturday that religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Quranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teachings fueled hostilities. ...

A High Court judge yesterday said immigrant parents should be allowed to slap and hit their children when they are new arrivals in Britain. To the outrage of children’s campaigners, Mrs. Justice Pauffley suggested police and social services should make allowance for foreigners because of the “different cultural context”. Her remarks came in a legal challenge from an Indian accused of beating his wife and seven-year-old son. […] In her ruling, the judge concluded: “I do not believe there was punitively harsh treatment of [the boy] of the kind that would merit the term ‘physical abuse’. Proper allowance must be...

Pope Francis believes it is fine for parents to smack their children as punishment for bad behaviour. He made the remarks, which were condemned by campaigners for child protection, in front of thousands of people at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square during a homily about the responsibilities of fatherhood. The Pope recalled a conversation he had had with a father, who told him that on occasion he hits his children if they have been naughty. The Pope, smiling and miming the action of slapping a child on the bottom, said: “One time, I heard a father say,...

Lawmakers in Indonesia's conservative Aceh province have passed a law that makes gay sex punishable by caning and subjects non-Muslims to it too. The law passed Saturday says anal sex between men is punishable by up to 100 lashes. Women found guilty of "rubbing" their body parts against each other for sexual pleasure are also liable for caning.

FReep This Poll! Do You Think It’s OK for Parents to Spank Their Children? YES NO Note: Go to the U-T San Diego link provided. On the U-T San Diego homepage scroll down a bit until you see the poll in the center column. Vote your choice.

Beguiled once again from her purpose — to apply to Tom Sawyer’s jam-stealing rump the well-deserved business end of her switch — Aunt Polly falls to ruminating: “Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks.” Mark Twain is careful to end The Adventures of Tom Sawyer while Tom is still a boy — “the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man,” he warns — but with Tom encouraging his pal Huck Finn to quit his ragamuffin ways and...

… Sweden was the first country on the planet to introduce a ban on physical punishment in 1979. Thereafter, the view was taken that hierarchy within families ought to be jettisoned in favor of treating children like adults. But while the egalitarian values of social democracy might work for the economy, they have been a disaster on the domestic front. […] … (S)omething is rotten in the state of Sweden. (Psychiatrist David) Eberhard points to growing social problems in school, where Swedish pupils routinely refuse to follow teachers’ instructions, and later on in what he views as their unfulfilled young...

Some parents at Leeds Elementary Public School in Alabama were in for a shock when their kids brought home a permission slip for corporal punishment. It stated that failure to return the form would be considered authorization for school personnel to administer the punishment. Corporal punishment is legal in 19 states in America. …

A growing number of married American couples are agreeing to allow husbands to keep their wives 'in line' by taking to corporal punishment. The trend is called Christian Domestic Discipline and much of what is known about the practice is published on the website Learning Domestic Discipline, published by husband and wife CDD duo, Clint and Chelsea. The website states: 'It is an arrangement between two adults who share the belief that the husband is the head of the household and with that position comes the right to enforce his authority.' Clint and Chelsea have also written a 50-page packet...

Sharia police in Aceh, the only Indonesian province to practise the Islamic law, caned a homeless “punk” couple nine times Friday after they were caught having pre-marital sex in public. Around 100 people in the town of Langsa watched and cheered when Shariah police in green-and-black hoods caned the 21-year-old woman and her 23-year--old boyfriend, along with 11 others convicted of gambling. “Those kids are punks. They were caught having sex by the public and were arrested by Shariah police,” Langsa prosecutor’s office head Putra Masduri said. Masduri said the couple were often seen loitering on the streets dressed as...

An Ozark mother and her boyfriend are facing charges tonight for child endangerment and endangerment. Delaina Collins is charged with six counts of child endangerment. Her boyfriend Michael Kuster is charged with child abuse for spanking kids with a board with staples in it. On August 14, police got a call to an Ozark home for domestic violence. The officer says he found Collins sweeping broken glass off the floor. Police say a 14-year-old girl tried to call for help but her mother's boyfriend threw the phone in the trash and then threw a beer and toaster at the teenager....

July 17--SHALIMAR -- Michael Bowersock, a former Okaloosa County school bus driver accused of molesting a student on the bus, will appear in court Tuesday, possibly to enter a plea. Bowersock's attorney, Christopher Varner, told Circuit Court Judge John Brown on Thursday that, given an opportunity to confer with his client, he would be able to either enter a plea or ask for a continuance. Court officers said they still were attempting to obtain a deposition from "one of the children" involved in the case. Bowersock and Varner were asked to return to court at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. Bowersock, 29,...

Decades ago, the parents in Indiana would take an unruly child out behind the proverbial woodshed and give them an attitude adjustment. Many, were the children of ages past that learned discipline from a switch or the hand. Then came the progressive attitude. The attitude that placed.....

Should Corporal Punishment play a role in schools? A state task force recommends CP be banned in schools. It would ban: spanking, paddling, slapping with rulers and more. Although not used much in AZ, it is commonly employed in other states. Corporal punishment be banned. Minor forms of corporal punishment are acceptable, like spanking and using rulers. Corporal punishment should be banned in public schools only. All forms of corporal punishment should be allowed. The government should spend their time on other important issues.

When Glenn Storman, a guidance counselor at Public School 212 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, came across an unruly student cursing at a substitute teacher in 2004, he ordered the boy to “zip it” and brandished a rolled-up piece of paper, thinking that would be the last he heard of the encounter. But five years later, Mr. Storman, 57, is embroiled in a legal dispute over allegations that he committed corporal punishment. A 27-year veteran of the school system, Mr. Storman denies hitting the student and is seeking to erase an unsatisfactory rating that a principal gave him. The Department of Education,...