I can't go there with you. Respect and consensus trumps pain and force every time.
Where do you get the silly idea that respect and physical discipline are mutually exclusive? It's out of respect for kids that you want to do what will make them the best possible human beings. Lack of discpline is disrespectful for the potential of children. If you never ever corrected a child at all during their life so they never learned right from wrong, you know what that would be? child abuse.
Treat kids as adults in the sense that they are responsible for their own actions and will suffer consequences if they do wrong, and you will raise responsible human beings who respect their own selves as well as others.
And in my experience, especially again wrt public school, I was smarter than a lot of the adults, ... As someone with 150 IQ, I see nothing unusual about that. It's a good lesson for future life: You respect people whatever relative 'smarts' are. Just because you might be smarter than the "boss" doesnt mean you can mock him and keep your job! :-) ... or at least it appeared that way given the restrictions placed on how we were allowed to interact. Thanks for making my point, alas. What is unusual is our obsession with trying to "justify" authority rather than simply saying that authority eg of school officials can and should deserve respect as authority figures. It's not the schools business nor need to justify every rule to every smart-alecky kid in the schoolyard.
My experience of public school was an environment that required you to do a lot of things that were patently unnecessary; this created a desire to assert ones self in response. And my experience was that asserting oneself could be constructive or destructive ... and it was essential to discpline away destructive behaviors or things got out of hand.
We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I don't believe that physically beating people is necessary to have a well ordered society, and in most cases it is counterproductive because inevitably that power is abused by petty tyrants, doing damage to the innocent and creating real trouble resistance.
Where do you get the silly idea that respect and physical discipline are mutually exclusive?
They're not, but corporal punishment represents a different kind of power dynamic between an administration and students (or parents and children). Corporal punishment sends the message that students should obey to avoid pain and discomfort. A better way to create discipline is to have an administration which students understand is furthering their interests, and respect out of their own enlightened self-interest.
What is unusual is our obsession with trying to "justify" authority rather than simply saying that authority eg of school officials can and should deserve respect as authority figures.
I couldn't disagree more. This is what seperates us from the facists, friend. The belief in authority should be respected "just because" is no good; subservance to power without reason or rationale is dangerous, and not an indeal I think we should indoctrinate our youth with.