Do you think corporal punishment is necessary for discipline in schools?

Absolutely not. I do not think corporal punishment is necessary in the home either. Parents are adults. They are supposed to be able to outthink the child-not descend to the child’s level.

There are plenty of books that provide help and support for parents without these skills.

School has no excuse for using corporal punishment. There are plenty of ways to deal with misbehavior including isolating the child, removing the child from school via suspension or, finally, expulsion.

No.
Corporal punishment, no matter who doles it out, may get better behavior- but it’s based out of fear. Children who are hit as behavior modification learn to behave out of fear of pain, and that physical violence is a way to get what they want.

As a teacher, I believe that corporal punishment is never acceptable. I actually feel that it is rarely necessary for parents to hit children. The danger with corporal punishment is that people will hit the child in anger, or when control is lost. This teaches the children that it is acceptable to hit in anger or frustration, not to avoid the behavior.

However, I can’t honestly say that there haven’t been moments when I wished that it was alright to smack a kid up the side of the head – not hard, mind you – just to see if you could knock their brain back into a place where it could function.
fortunately, my brain kicked in before I did something foolish.

Of course not. In fact the research has stated quite clearly that corporal punishment is not effective in any situation, including with parents. Of course many people will tell you “it worked on me”. I have a feeling that is more of a coping mechanism. No matter how you look at it though if you can effectively punish and change behavior without corporal punishment (which we can) then there is no need for it. Not in the school or in the home.

I don’t see corporal punishment as being acceptable. I’ve seen too many parents who’ve wrenched their child’s arm and smacked them on the bottom out of anger. It’s infuriating sometimes when I see it, but I try not to question their method. I would never use it.

@RedPowerLady It worked for me, but I do see some problems I have that may have stemmed from it. One of which is my fear of “not being good enough”.

@Phobia Thanx for being honest about it. I suppose it does work to a certain extent but IMO the end results are not worth the immediate ones.

Of course it is. Sorry, I read it as capital punishment.

@Phobia It sure doesn’t take corporal punishment to feel like you’re not good enough. Oh. Wait. What am I saying? I did receive corporal punishment. Not often, but it definitely was part of my background. Well, as one might say when nothing can be done about it, “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!” Of course, we are the they. Or I am. Never mind.

No, no, and no. Even if I thought corporal punishment was ok at home, I’d be livid to hear that another person hit my child. A teacher who can’t think of a better way to discipline shouldn’t be a teacher.

Never acceptable.

Nope. This has and always will be my opinion: deciding to corporally punish your child is a personal parental decision that should never be made by the school. While I don’t agree with corporal punishment of children in general, I do think parents should have the option to do it if they wish, but it should never cross the line into abuse, otherwise they should not be having kids. But I personally think there is always an alternative to corporal punishment.

Nope never ever necessary for parents or definitely not schools.

No way. If I learned of a teacher hitting my child, there would be hell to pay. And as for me hitting them, there are so many other ways to demand respect from kids. There’s no need to put my hands on them.

I am sure that if beatings were given, from an early age, to underachievers, grades would soon perk up. That said, it is not ok for the ends to justify the means. Beating children is wrong.

But what about no physical contact which seems to be the way things normally occur. Wouldn’t it be good for teachers to grab a kid by the shoulders, look them in the eyes, and say you aren’t cutting it.

It’s not only not necessary – in most schools it is illegal. In some countries, it is illegal to hit children for any reason, including “spanking” by their parents. In the public school system in the US a teacher hitting students can be charged with assault.

@YARNLADY As is should be! I wish it was illegal here to hit them (spank) for any reason

@justme1 Where are you from that allows it?

The United States. Is it not allowed where you are from?

@justme1 Aha. I read your post wrong. I though you were saying you wish it wasn’t allowed in schools. But you meant in homes? Correct?
I’m from US too.

Yes I wish that it wasn’t allowed anywhere at all, no exceptions!

@justme1 Hey I can get behind that!

@RedPowerLady cool.

My parents made it very clear to the elementary school principal: I was not to be spanked by him. If there was punishment due me, my father would do it.
The principal was very unhappy with this. What he didn’t know was that, if I was to be punished, my father would be far worse on me than the Principal.

I would definitely ban corporal punishment if I was in charge. Seriously, corporal punishment does nothing but traumatize the person enough to think that if he/she ever commits that same crime again, he may receive a spanking a helluva lot worse than the one he/she just received. That is not how you learn. In order to change, you need to understand what you’ve done and why it was wrong, not to understand that you shouldn’t do it again or you will get a spanking to remember. Furthermore, not only does corporal punishment traumatize the person for a specific situation, this punishment can carry on in further life if the person ever becomes a parent of a child. That child may have committed something wrong, but just because the parent received corporal punishment in no way means that the child is elligible to receive it as well. However, this point is lost on most parents and this cycle of corporal punishment carries on and on until some decent person is willing to stop it.

In a nutshell? Corporal punishment=No effin way.

Seeing as here in the UK corporal punishment in schools has been banned (and I assume it is illegal in the States too) I would be interested to hear the opinions of anyone who remembers when it was perfectly acceptable and how the felt/feel abut it now. I only say this because, whilst I don’t agree with corporal punishment in schools, my father remembers getting the cane at school if he misbehaved and he still believes that his school days were the best days of his life. He has no issues with the fact that he recieved corporal punishment as he says that he always knew the boundaries and he very rarely crossed them. He wouldn’t dream of swearing at a teacher for example like I have heard so many of my school mates do.

Whilst I don’t think corporal punishment is the answer I do think that teachers need more power to discipline nowadays. We live in such a nanny state and I don’t believe that that teachers or students are benefitting from it. I can only speak from what I have seen here in the UK but some of my school mates were horribly rude towards teachers and all the teacher could do in the way of punishment was send them out of the room or give them detention, neither of which the kids cared about. I don’t know what the answer is but something needs to change.

I live in a country in the caribbean where corpral punishment was just previously banned. I have seen children now at primary school level being very disrecpectful to teachers and i have observed that the whole discipline of schools has taken a downward turn. I am not condoling corporal punishment because i have been a victim of severe corporal punishment beatings while i was a child. I have experienced having a cane beaten down on my back at eleven years old for not doing my homework. But if corporal punishment is banned, what are some of the other methods of gaining respect and please be realistic.

@cornbird if an educator can’t come up with an alternative other than fear, they shouldn’t be an educator

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Not just fear, but fear of physical pain and possible humilation. Fear of losing the respect of peers or an adult, fear of losing privileges, etc can all be reasonable motivators in a classroom, I think.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir From what I understand, educators in some Caribbean nations do not have nearly as much education as teachers in the US. If they grow up in families where corporal punishment is the norm (and, unfortunately, many black families use corporal punishment, something that some researchers believe is a legacy of slavery), and if this is the norm in schools, it is very difficult to change.

I know of a consultant from a foundation that went down to the Caribbean (Dominica) to educate teachers in more effective techniques for providing education. She said there is a lot to do.

@daloon hmm, I don’t know if I buy that whole corporal punishment being tied to slavery’s legacy connection…families of any race have used corporal punishment and I think it connects to a paradigm that placed children in a really inferior position to parents at a time when they were thought of as labor and replaceable