Would you sent your child to school which allows corporal punishment?

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It’s eye-opening to see the responses from so many different countries on this issue. Here in the US it probably varies by region, I would guess.

Me, I was “special needs” with ADD, but 45 or so years ago my mom didn’t know that. We got into power struggles and she was afflicted with a lot of anxiety, depression, diabetes, and need to control. So she would be quite worked up, and if things got beyond the “point of no return,” she’d spank me excessively when what I really needed was help dealing with my out-of-control emotions. :bighanky:

I’m not saying this to bad-mouth her as she would show remorse and even though our relationship always had some friction (plenty of it my instigation, I was no saint :o), there was also a lot of love and we forgave each other quite thoroughly for everything long before she died. :hug3:

Paradoxically, I was also the type of sensitive girl who, perhaps due to what I’d experienced at home, was absolutely traumatized in school by the sight of another child getting swatted! :eek: This started in first grade, and then I remember the big paddle swatting of kids in junior high; one girl in my history class who’d just gotten 2 swats was in pain and crying. I felt so bad for her.

So if I’d had children, I had planned at one time never to use any corporal punishment. And I would confront people in stores (and get cussed at) if they were being really abusive (even verbally) to their kids. And I’d be all shaken up by it for the rest of the day.

Why I’m telling all this is, I think excessive corporal punishment can affect the “spectators” as well, and not in a good way.

Over the years, I have thought that if I did have a child who was running amok and ONE quick pop on the bottom would get his/her attention enough for me to then take him/her by the shoulders and look into the eyes and give the consequences for misbehavior (loss of privilege or whatever), that wouldn’t be a mortal sin on my part.

But I would never trust someone else to assume they could use corporal punishment on my kid. I would be involved and working with the school and the kid to correct the problem, and actually I would let my kid and the school know that if there was something egregious, where my kid was harming others, then the school should call the police and have them restrain or have a serious talk with the kid. Let them know they can’t get away with stuff in the real world.

Because it seems like kids either are traumatized by school-administered corporal punishment or they try to act tough and blow it off. I don’t think they associate it with real life. And the physical contact, again, I wouldn’t trust that to a stranger who I don’t know might be getting some kind of pervy jollies out of it. Ugh.
 
Yes i would not permit public punishment or sign permission for my children.
 
The school district where I went to school allowed it. They would call the parents first and come up with a punishment together. My brother got a couple of approved swats in elementary school. The first and only time I got in trouble was in high school and I begged for swats so I didn’t have to have 3 days of in-school suspension, they denied my request. 😦
I didn’t mind going there and both the high school and elementary school have won state and federal awards and have been on lists in magazines for best schools in the country. I guess they are doing more good than harm. 🤷
 
Corporal punishment here is allowed by law. I think the law states that the school headmaster must give permission, and that the maximum strokes of cane that you can receive is 5 on the bum-bum, and that incident has to be recorded in a log book. However, this is Africa folks. 😉

I’ve witnessed the best of both worlds. All primary schools I went to allowed it, although the flogging you’d get from a public school would be excessive. Of the 4 schools I went to in high school, 2 allowed it and 2 didn’t - and from all that experience I’d conclude that I’M AGAINST CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

I take it as a lazy form of disciplining a child. Also, it’s like teaching a child that you can solve problems through violent and/or pain-inflicting methods.

However, at primary school level, I don’t mind a bit of spanking - although I’d rather the teacher communicate with the parent first.

Spanking high school kids in my opinion WILL NEVER HELP A CHILD. I remember guys at high school who’d be flogged after being caught drinking, and to relieve themselves of the pain? They smoke a joint in the toilets. So what have they learnt? Grown-up students are able to withstand the pain of several strokes and go back to breaking rules, without news reaching their parents.

There have been campaigns by activists to outlaw corporate punishment…Teachers complain that overall discipline has gone down as a result, but they don’t set a good example themselves in terms of their commitment towards their job.

So would I send my child to such a school? Guess I have no choice…I wouldn’t mind…
 
The idea that a school might inflict pain on the students it is entrusted to teach appalls me. I would absolutely never enroll my child in a school that permitted hitting, swatting or any other type of corporal punishment.
 
If it was a good Catholic school: yes.

Corporal punishment: rarely harmful, rarely necessary, can be effective, but there are other effective ways. Of course parents don’t take well to those ways either.

I remember once when I was on the school board, a middle school group of boys was causing a bit of trouble. The principle marched them to the hallway told them to kneel down facing the wall, told them if any of them moved they were being suspended, went to his office for 20 minutes, came back at let them get up and return to the class.

You would have thought he had beat them senseless with a bull whip judging by the parents actions.
 
Schools still do this?

I find that odd for the US, saying that CPS is supposed to be called even when a parent swats their own child’s butt.
 
Corporal Punishment was removed from schools in the first place because teachers went
to far, they terrorised kids with canes and straps… I went to a Marist brothers collage
in Grade 4… it was dreadful… getting the strap every other day because of one trivial thing or another… or kids being throw up against the class room wall…
Having said that, The Pendulum has swung too far the other way, in which kids have little respect for school community values… I personally I believe in limited Corporal Punishment , but with strict Guidelines … but who will enforce those Guidelines in a proper manner… when it comes to criminal acts maybe it should be the parents that should be punished…
 
Cariethra said:
Schools still do this?

I find that odd for the US, saying that CPS is supposed to be called even when a parent swats their own child’s butt.
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It depends on the state. I know police officers who spank their kids.
 
Phil_Marinus said:
Corporal Punishment was removed from schools in the first place because teachers went
to far, they terrorised kids with canes and straps… I went to a Marist brothers collage
in Grade 4… it was dreadful… getting the strap every other day because of one trivial thing or another… or kids being throw up against the class room wall…
Having said that, The Pendulum has swung too far the other way, in which kids have little respect for school community values… I personally I believe in limited Corporal Punishment , but with strict Guidelines … but who will enforce those Guidelines in a proper manner… when it comes to criminal acts maybe it should be the parents that should be punished…
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I was taught by the Mercy(less) Sisters in high school and witnessed several acts which I would describe as nothing else but violence. Looking back, I’m sure that some of the nuns had psychological or mental problems that were not being addressed. One nun committed suicide by setting herself alight when I was at school. That must have been unbelievably traumatising for the rest of the community of sisters, but in those days, there wasn’t such ideas as post traumatic stress syndrome and counselling. My Dad was president of the P and C for most of the years my sister and I were at the school so we subsequently learned a lot of things that went on that were kept hidden from the general public.

To answer the topic question, I wouldn’t send my kids to a corporal punishment using school. I had lots of contact with my kids teachers as they passed through the system and too many of them, I couldn’t have trusted to be disinterested disciplinarians.
 
Hm…potentially.

I am for limited physical discipline, but i would need to know the policies very intimately
 
LongingSoul said:
I was taught by the Mercy(less) Sisters in high school and witnessed several acts which I would describe as nothing else but violence. Looking back, I’m sure that some of the nuns had psychological or mental problems that were not being addressed. One nun committed suicide by setting herself alight when I was at school. That must have been unbelievably traumatising for the rest of the community of sisters, but in those days, there wasn’t such ideas as post traumatic stress syndrome and counselling. My Dad was president of the P and C for most of the years my sister and I were at the school so we subsequently learned a lot of things that went on that were kept hidden from the general public.

To answer the topic question, I wouldn’t send my kids to a corporal punishment using school. I had lots of contact with my kids teachers as they passed through the system and too many of them, I couldn’t have trusted to be disinterested disciplinarians.
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They used to think they could give a classroom of any size and composition to one teacher, and discipline could be kept if only enough corporal punishment were allowed. It doesn’t work that way…and yes, the regular use of corporal punishment traumatizes both the teacher and the students, both those getting the punishment and those who are made to witness it.

The school I went to allowed corporal punishment, but I think it was used every other year, and for very serious transgressions. This was at a time when parents routinely used at least the threat of corporal punishment. None of this, though, were the particularly cruel kinds, such as used sticks or targeted hands, feet, or joints.

Even at that low level, I say good riddance to it. We survived it because it wasn’t particularly draconian, not a fraction of what siblings might typically deal out to each other in a week’s time, but it didn’t improve anyone.
 
tafan said:
If it was a good Catholic school: yes.

Corporal punishment: rarely harmful, rarely necessary, can be effective, but there are other effective ways. Of course parents don’t take well to those ways either.

I remember once when I was on the school board, a middle school group of boys was causing a bit of trouble. The principle marched them to the hallway told them to kneel down facing the wall, told them if any of them moved they were being suspended, went to his office for 20 minutes, came back at let them get up and return to the class.

You would have thought he had beat them senseless with a bull whip judging by the parents actions.
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Same for me.

Heck, at my all-male Catholic high school, our phys. ed. teacher gave us two options when we broke a rule:
  1. JUG (Justice under God) which was after school detention
  2. a knuckle rap to the back of the head. You bent over, and the teacher gave you the knuckles (just a one time pop). It really hurt, but didn’t do any damage, and most students would have rather have had that versus detention. It was only one teacher, but was no big deal.
If it was nuns I trusted, or a good Catholic school that adhered to the Church’s teachings, I’d be okay with it. I figured if I didn’t want to get whacked, I should learn to obey the rules. It wasn’t as though we didn’t know them ahead of time.

But each parent is different. My parents occasionally spanked us (not often), and it served its purpose as well, so that may play into my being okay with it.
 
Yeah, right after hades froze over.

If a school administrator or teacher were so incompetent as to find physical force the only way they could discipline effectively, I would never entrust my child to them and would question the mind set of any parent who did.
 
I think my problem with it is primarily that it ends up getting used on special needs kids far too often. The school that I went to didn’t seem to believe in ADD, so those kids would get physical punishments a lot (especially the boys).

In the end, it made school into an unsafe place for some of the children with special needs. Some of them developed anxiety related to school, my brother included. Everything has gotten worse since then, and now he can only be homeschooled. He was housebound for a year, because he couldn’t stand to be outside.

There were other factors leading into that, of course, but I believe that the excesive corporal punishment was a part of it. I don’t have a problem with occasional corporal punishment at home from parents, but I don’t think it’s wise to give that power to a teacher who may or my not know what the child is even capable of.
 
Book_Worm said:
Yeah, right after hades froze over.

If a school administrator or teacher were so incompetent as to find physical force the only way they could discipline effectively, I would never entrust my child to them and would question the mind set of any parent who did.
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See this is quite typical on these boards. Any time the topic of corporal punishment comes up, there are generally two camps - those that are okay with it (or favor it) and that those that abhor it.

Both are perfectly valid responses, and yet why is it that there is always a decent number of the group who abhor it who feel the need to challenge the parenting of those who would choose to use it.

We always hear things like “I question any parent who resorts to physical discipline” or “you are not very good at discipline if you have to resort of spanking” or “corporal punishment is abuse.”

Why is those who favor the use of generally limited corporal punishment never similarly feel the need to chastise or criticize parents who don’t want to use it?

One could easily question the mindset of any parents who refuses corporal punishment, but none of us do, since they are not my children, and every parent is different. It is always a one-sided critique, when really it is not anyone’s business but the parent.

I have an issue with any parent who goes to far and abuses a child, and also have an issue with any parent who goes the opposite direction and is too lax to effectively discipline their children. Both are doing children harm in the long run.
 
My advice is to raise your kids so they won’t ever be considered for corporal punishment. In schools I attended a kid had to get really far out of line to get corporal punishment. I remember a really mouthy kid in high school said something incredibly disrespectful to my gym teacher, and I instantly thought “That kid needs a slap in the mouth.” at the same time that the gym teacher slapped him in the mouth. The class clapped in agreement. That kid NEVER acted up in that class again. That was the only corporal punishment I saw in highschool. It was technically against the rules but exceptions were made. I thank God for my instructors who were fair and honest, but allowed to be authoritative as well.
 
I think corporal punishment if used should be left to the parents. There are enough ways to correct children without having to hit them. If problems with a child persist and are so disruptive as the teacher thinks corporal punishment is a viable option I should hope the parents have been notified and a plan of action can be hashed out between the key adult authority figures (parents and teacher).
 
Julian_Bashir said:
Why is those who favor the use of generally limited corporal punishment never similarly feel the need to chastise or criticize parents who don’t want to use it? .
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Corporal punishment is hitting. If someone sees hitting as wrong, then they will see corporal punishment as wrong.

They don’t see it as a parenting choice. If hitting is wrong, then hitting a child is wrong.
 
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