Posted on 07/29/2006 7:48:15 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Our enlightened schools: Ritalin replaces spanking
After I read professor Judith Kleinfeld's report last week, exposing the feminist hoax of the early '90s that purported to show girls as disadvantaged in American schools, I discussed the matter with a friend who teaches "problem" children in a suburban Alberta system.
The Kleinfeld report shows that the disadvantaged kids in American schools, as indisputably evidenced by dropout rates, university registrations and chronic behavioral problems, are not girls. They are boys.
"How many of your 'problem' children are boys?" I asked my friend. Nearly all of them, he said. "How many of the problems are discipline problems?" Nearly all of them, he said. "How many of these discipline problems could be solved if teachers and parents were to routinely swat these kids across their bottoms for misbehavior?" Nearly all of them, he said. "Then why don't they do it?" I asked.
He looked at me amazed. "Because, of course, society doesn't approve of that anymore," he said.
"Then tell me this," I said. "As far back as written human records go – about 5,500 years – parents and teachers have spanked misbehaving children. So what has 20th century society discovered about children that all these earlier societies didn't know?"
He pondered briefly. "I don't know that they discovered anything," he said.
"Then on what basis," I wondered, "did we did we conclude that 20th century society was right, and all the previous societies wrong?"
He had no idea, my friend replied, but he suspected there was no basis whatever. I agreed. I was a journalist while this transition from spanking to no-spanking was transpiring, and observed that it seemed to be based not on evidence at all, but on an assumption about human nature, sometimes summarized in the aphorism that "violence begets violence." The idea was that any child taught by methods that involve "violence" is altogether likely to become a violent adult.
On the other hand, if instead of hitting a child we approached him rationally – "Think how you've hurt So-and-So by doing that," or "How would you like it if someone did that to you?" or "What kind of a world would we have if everybody did that?" – then the child would respond benignly, would never repeat the misdeed and no "violence" whatever would be involved.
On the contrary, said my friend, far more typically the child does the same thing again and again and again. The only real lesson he learns is how to close his ears and mind to the lecture.
"And in the meantime," I added, "the parent becomes more and more exasperated and eventually frantic. Eventually beside himself (or herself), the parent takes a baseball bat to the kid and half kills him." So it was non-violence observably begot violence, and very serious violence indeed.
Something else is worth noting in this connection. We have now had a generation of children, even two generations, raised on the dictum that "violence begets violence." We should therefore be seeing the statistics on juvenile crime and juvenile "violence" showing a steady and reassuring decline.
Instead, we see them steadily rising. Police patrol the schools. In some they inspect the students for concealed weapons, which the kids say they have to carry to protect themselves against other kids. And while we don't spank boys in the classrooms anymore, we give them Ritalin to sedate them into a semi-comatose stupor so the teacher can get her job done. Better to drug them than to swat them. Such, apparently, is our thinking.
Needless to say, it is boys, far more than girls, who require physical discipline, so the decision to first stigmatize and then prohibit the use of the strap was also a decision to "disadvantage" boys in the schools.
It was also in a way a decision to rid the schools of male teachers. Not many men would be prepared, like my friend, to subject themselves every day to a horde of uncontrollable brats. Small wonder that the teachers, who are now nearly all women, tend to focus their attention on the girls.
How long will it be, I asked my friend, before we realize what a catastrophic societal error we have made and restore so-called "violence" to education? "Not in my lifetime," he said dolefully.
He may be wrong. It seems the even in Canada we are now recognizing more and more the other follies of the '60s. So far, the schools have largely escaped re-examination of this particular assumption. When it happens, change may be much swifter than my friend imagines.
I suspect many of these "problem" boys are just boys being boys, and that's just something our increasingly feminized society deems unacceptable.
HUH? Got a source for that?
Both of my girls are legal gun owners and my older has taken Prozac for several years. I don't remember that being a question on any form she filled out or being asked at any class she attended.
All this touchy-feely, nonviolent, self esteem boosting, PC, gobbledygook is disgusting.
It even extends to the so-called "War on Terror" where we try to use PC methods on a bunch of people with 7th century mindsets dedicated to our utter destruction.
Perhaps it is state by state, last time I saw a CT form the question was on there....that being grounds enough for refusal to issue a permit.
What a sad commentary ...we would rather medicate our boys, than discipline them.
FWIW, I was a fairly well behaved little kid :)))
..but if a spanking was needed, I got it.
I received very few, mostly I was 'switched' by my grandmother....who I have the deepest & most profound respect for.
In case some of you don't understand 'switched'..
..I'm from the South....a switch is a flexible bough broken from a large, sturdy flower bush......and it stings when applied to the backside of the legs.
I'm no worse for wear, however....I never had welts or scars.....but I got the message.
I'm sorry, that's not correct. Guns are forbidden to the mentally ill only if they have been adjudicated insane and committed involuntarily to an asylum. This is a formal legal process, with checks and balances and avenues of appeal.
-ccm
we give them Ritalin to sedate them into a semi-comatose stupor
Do you support the WOD (War On some Drugs)? Welcome to yet another unintended consequence of your world.
A government that can step on parental rights and force a child to ingest certain drugs can surely do the same to an adult. Stated differently, a government that prohibits persons from ingesting certain drugs can force persons to ingest certain drugs.
On the other hand, parents that can't manage their problem children often readily use large amounts of Ritalin to 'shut down' their children. Many of these children are only hyperactive (in this special case, some of the parents were annoyed by having 'defect children' what may have contributed to their behavior). The result were detatched, zombie-like children which went wild in compensation when the drug stopped working.
Ritalin used in this way will definitely PRODUCE mental derangements.
I was a hyperactive kid and would pick at her until she became fed up. Afterwards, I always felt serene and happy.
I was spanked. Not frequently and never in school because my parents made sure I respected adults and I was just naturely more mature for my age. I spank my children, my daughter almost never needs it because she is more mature but as for Johnathan and Ryan if we hadn't reined them in they'd rule the house or would be uncontrollable.
The thing that I noticed is that through metered application of spanking that we have produced children that know where the line is and respect it usually. This is especially important when a child is young and can not communicate well though one should be careful not to confuse a sick unruly child with a stubborn misbehaving one. I don't believe spanking should not be the first resort but when you are in the situation where you just had a child do something that put themselves or their brother or sister in real danger then they don't need talking first they need a "serious" spanking and then a lecture for emphasis. I personally like to put the fear of God into them with a loud intoning voice which I think does a lot for effect.
I think is is horrible that Ritalin has become the drug of choice for those who lose control of their children and it saddens me that many in the Christian community who wish to have little perfect boys that sit still and don't fidget have increasingly relied on such doping of their children.
I'm sure some will be offended by this but the truth is that there is no evidence that the inordinate number of boys that have been prescribed drugs receive any long term benefits over those who are not given such drugs. Now you have adults indulging in the idea that they need Ritalin, giving themselves another excuse for their lack of discipline and laziness or just the fact they get bored in boring environments.
excellent and very well thought out.
That's not a Universal Truth. But neither is it a Universal Falsehood. In some situations, it's a good model of reality. In others, it isn't. It takes wisdom and insight (and perhaps good intel) to know when you have a situation where "violence begets violence," and when you have a situation where "violence ends violence."
Adherents of the cult of Peace-as-a-Religion are not wise.
Were "violence begets violence" a Universal Truth, then any resistance to crime--especially including the sorts of things police and courts generally do in response to crime--would always just make matters worse.
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