Posted on 05/20/2002 9:54:04 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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Schools, Kids and Whippings
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Because of the lack of discipline among school kids these days, some folks honestly believe that bringing back classroom "whuppins" is going to solve the problems created by parental failure, "easy" ways out of personal responsibility, federalized education where the agenda overrides parental authority, where schools blacklist "problem" parents who are, for the most part, those who disagree with flaky school policies, and a great deal of federally-sponsored racial bias. To which I say, bullschwacky! Okay so I don't have kids of my own, but I had two parents, a war-zone home, and I have friends who do have kids. Discipline begins at home. Respect for authority begins at home. The knowledge of right and wrong begins at home. Instruction about the value of a good education begins at home. In fact, life begins at home! No whuppins at any school will instill in any child the values that parents fail to teach or teach properly. It might make for more dropouts, runaways and resentment, including a few more school shootings or other acts of violence, because we're living in a violent era that didn't exist when I was growing up. Oh yes, some violence has always existed ... but not on the scale we see it now. Today's headlines injected onto a 1950's front page of a city newspaper would cause collective cardiac arrest. Letting federalized teachers whip the daylights out of kids in school because they have religious beliefs opposed to certain teachings in the schools might make more drones for the Great Senseless Society, but it won't produce better kids and it will not enhance education. It won't stop school violence but it may increase it. My mother and her siblings grew up in an environment where grandpa "ran the home" and he used a double razor strop to whip his frail daughters and one son. When granny tried to intercede on behalf of the kids to talk to them, grandpa would threaten her with "stay out of this, Emma, or else." That isn't being the man of the house ... it's being a brute. (As a side note, once granny got over being intimidated, she gave him "hail columbia" for the rest of his living days and told him over and over "I was too young and dumb to know I'd married a crazy man." She gave no quarter and spared no insult, but she did stay married. When he died, she shed no tears.) My mother was dead-set against corporal punishment as the standard way of training children. She felt there were times it was needed, and I got a few wooden coathangers swatted across my back, but from as far back as any memories exist, mom first tried talking to me, then if I didn't get the point, she was good at intimidation. My dad didn't like me, my mother knew it, and would not let him lay a hand on me. Once, when I was 14, mama and I were having a somewhat heated discussion, and without warning he interfered long enough to backhand me across the jaw and send all 103 pounds of me sprawling across the living room floor and into a chair. Of course, this is the same dad who dumped mom and me in Arizona when I was in my early 20's, demanded a divorce, and went about his womanizing and the booze my mother wouldn't let him drink. The school issue was never a concern when it came to corporal punishment. I went to California private schools, was a good student, corporal punishment was not applied. Rather, the headmistress of the school sent for the parents for a "conference" when the kids were a problem. At least I didn't have to be terrified of school ... and I do not like to be hit. There are some kids that people feel like blistering until they cannot sit down for a week, I've met them all through life, but look into their homes and generally the problem is readily discernible. Delinquent parents. Or just plain mean parents like my dad and my grandpa. Bringing back corporal punishment into federalized schools allows for all sorts of options for teacher abuse. Race bias is one of them, and it exists. It also exists in the workplace, as I found out all too soon when I went to work for the State of Arizona in 1992 where Hispanics were favored. I have no doubt that kids whose parents are trying to bring them up with values of abstinence, a drug-free life, belief in God, and respect for proper authority would meet with some federalized teachers who would beat the daylights out of them at the slightest mention of any of these precepts. We're also talking about the same federalized system that calls it a crime in some states for parents to discipline their kids with a swat on the behind when they act up in the store. Neither the school nor the government have the job of parenting children, and the parents of this nation should make sure they never do, because they are trying to do just that. Now, before I start sounding like I've gone soft-headed on bringing up kids, I am a believer in discipline beginning at the earliest age. This idea that kids need to get in touch with their inner selves and be given free reign for all sorts of acting-out is nonsense only a new-age society would promote. Any parent with that philosophy isn't fit to bring up children anyway, and that seems to be the way "Taliban John" Lindh was allowed to express himself. Advice from the Spock of Star Trek would be better than the advice Dr. Spock gave in the 60's about how to let kids run wild and grow up without any respect for authority. However, as nearly as I can tell from the reports that I receive from folks who have kids attending highly federalized schools and their battle to keep the kids from calling 911 at the slightest hint of discipline (where did kids five and six learn about that?) -- the first place to begin with corporal punishment is with delinquent parents, and the second place is with leftist teachers who instruct kids on their "rights" against home discipline. Originally, public schools were there to educate children in specific courses such as language, spelling, arithmetic, history, civics, and other "school" subjects to prepare them for either college or the workplace. All other child-rearing was to be done at home. Living day in and day out in any home environment will, intentionally or unintentionally, transfer to the children the values modeled in the home. That's how we got the welfare dynasties. The values of society as reflected in the neighborhood in which kids are brought up will also transfer, which is why so many thoughtful parents today are trying to get out of the city and into areas where they can keep a closer eye on the kids, their friends, and what's being taught at school. When we can't trust our government with our immigration policies, our Bill of Rights or even our Constitution, should we trust them with the children? I would say at this point the statement of former president Ronald Reagan applies to the highest degree: "government is not the solution to the problem, government IS the problem." Amen?
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You are gagging on a gnat and swallowing a camel.
Let's use an example: My son was attacked by two students. The normal punishment is suspension but they couldn't suspend the children because the parents refused the suspension because they worked. They tried to take away their recess but the teachers didn't have anyone to watch them in the classroom. So they told the kids not to do it again and told my son to stay away from the kids. They attacked another student. Same treatment. The school has no real way of punishing kids. If you know any good methods, they would love to hear it.
Private education would make this a mute point. Each parent gets to make the choice of how their children are educated in a free society.
I choose to have other things happen which do not involve physical touching on my children. You are free to choose otherwise.
Perhaps you would like a system which would allow parents in government schools the ability to formally cede their parental rights to physical punishment to government employees on a person by person basis. Merely speculation.
You are gagging on a gnat and swallowing a camel.
I have no idea what this phrase means.
This is called assault.
If you know any good methods, they would love to hear it.
It should be refered to the police for criminal action.
All I know is that yes, I have spanked my progeny with my hand and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. When I was in public school until the great busing pograms began in 1970, corporal punishment was swift and sure and the schools were better for it. Nowadays, public school teachers I know lament the lack of control in the classroom and of course have no discipline but detention and suspension. Private schools I attended had serious corporal punishment and there was no exception unless in a wheelchair or something of that nature or being a girl.
The boys run rough-shod on them... and the teachers at school.
The parents should be the one to met out punishment, not the schools.
If the child is warned to be quiet and behave... and does not, he/she should be removed from school.
2 bad kids left to disrupt a class will stop the learning process for all.
It's a no-brainer and had worked for over 100 years... prior to the last 20.
We don't agree on what things are big and what things are small it seems. I think you have it precisely backwards.
My children's rights to be secure in their person and my rights to raise my children without other people physically assaulting them are big things IMO.
You already said they turned around and did it to another student yet you are saying it is not a safety issue?
Neither do I. So I can surmise that you also think that I should cede to some government employee the right to HIT MY KINDERGARTENER? That is what this is all about, the right to hit 5 yr olds? They used to make us wear dunce caps and sit behind the piano.
"Okay so I don't have kids of my own"
Okay another ditzy dame...
I don't got no anklebiters either but I know what a hellraiser I was when I was young enough to hold down, and I for damn sure deserved every a$$-whack I got. Any kid o' mine is going to get the almighty devil beaten outta him when occasion dictates. That's the only way most kids learn.
Every anti-spanker I've met seems to have one of the following rationales:
1. History of abuse in immediate family.
2. Some liberal hoity-toity white-linen idea that inflicting pain to get your point across is uncouth, violent and primitive.
3. "Spanking??! What kind of kinky b@st@rd ARE you! [SMACK]" ;)
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