Anyone for a Better Way?

To the Editor:

In the July 31st issue of HPR, Ed Raymond laments the increasing restrictions being placed on schoolteachers’ use of physical means to correct classroom interruptions by disruptive students.
Raymond weighs in citing an extensive career within the local public education system, during which time he came to accept the use of physical force (as a last resort) as a corrective measure.

Where Raymond has failed to do his homework is in the effectiveness of corporal punishment as part of a positive educational experience, in or out of the school setting. He invokes the pervasive concern that “...violence teaches children to use violence to solve problems”, but then counters this with three examples.

The first is that banning of corporal punishment in the English school system has been followed by an increase in disruptive student behavior; the second, testimony from an ex-student validating the receipt of corporal punishment as “behavior-enhancing,” which Raymond follows with the comment that “Sometimes a size 12 in the butt of a high school student marvelously clears the sinuses, the auditory channels, and concentrates the brain waves on important matters.” Finally, the example is offered that “…50 of our states allow parents to use corporal punishment, including spanking, to correct behavior.”
The second example is inconsequential, since the reader is left to assume, without knowing for sure, that this individual represents an emotionally healthy member of our society.

To the extent that most of the U.S. allowing for corporal punishment might be said to reflect American attitudes in general, it is noteworthy that Uncle Sam placed second to last out of 21 developed countries in UNICEF’s 2007 Report Card on Child Well-Being. Anyone care to guess who was dead last? England, with historically one of the most punitive school systems on record!

In no way do any of the three examples address or refute the monumental body of scientific data to date that violence is largely learned behavior modulated by genetic background.

You want an increasingly violent society? Keep using abusive, coercive, and neglectful means to modify the behavior of society’s children and adolescents. Although the disruptive behaviors of students typically reflect a past or present neglectful, chaotic, or violent home environment, there is no evidence to support that duplicating aggressive treatment in the school setting could be considered “behavior enhancing” and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Here’s a thought: Why not make the school system a place where our youth can begin to experience healthier behavior choices, possibly even better than those being witnessed at home? Survivors of abusive situations often cite the beneficence of even one teacher, counselor, coach, or mentor that dared to make the difference in their life.

It has been proposed that the desire to retain corporal punishment in our society is rooted in a regressive desire by those in authority to humiliate others in the same way that they themselves were humiliated as children. Being mindful of this, can corporal punishment have any role in an educational system ostensibly run by mature individuals for the sake of instilling thoughtfulness, curiosity, morals, and citizenship in the nation’s future adults?

It is worth contemplating the late Paul Shepard’s concerns in this regard, writing in his “Nature and Madness,” that “…the only society more frightful than one run by children, as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, might be one run by childish adults”.

-John Weiland
Bismarck