Should parents hit their kids for “discipline?” I won’t even go there at this point. Instead, let’s talk about corporal punishment in schools: teachers being permitted by law to strike students. I know a woman who steadfastly believes in corporal punishment from parent to child. But at the same time, she is dead-against corporal punishment being allowed in the school system: “Nobody touches my kids,” she has said.
When parents hit their kids, they claim it’s out of love. Maybe it is in some cases, and maybe it’s because the parent is the one throwing the temper tantrum, in that a man who hits his kids is the same man who’d smack his wife upside the head for being five minutes late with dinner. And a woman who hits her kids can’t control her emotions and has anger management problems because of her own harsh upbringing. Enough of that.
When teachers hit students, is it out of love? When a teacher believes students should get spankings or be whacked across the knuckles with a ruler, is this because that teacher loves that child? That’s a load of crap and you know it. The quickest, easiest way to control a feisty or disruptive kid is to hit him. No brains, creativity, problem solving or thought processes required. The easy way out for a harried, impatient teacher.
Do you really want someone else hitting your kids? Where do you draw the line? What if the teacher is a 200 pound man, and the kid he hits is your 14 year old daughter — and he wallops her on the rump? Or maybe he smacks her in the breast and claims he meant to smack her on the shoulder but she moved at the last minute? Do you see the repercussions here, if hitting is allowed in schools?
What if a junior high school teacher is a 5-2 woman who, in an attempt to vent her frustrations and get in her personal “hit quota,” picks on only those kids under five feet? The big kids, no matter how unruly, get no corporal punishment. But alas, one day she loses it and smacks a bigger kid. He or she then hits back! Knocks her to the floor!
A 55 year old high school teacher is walking down the halls and suddenly feels a fist pound him in the back so hard he falls flat on his face. He looks up at a strapping six foot tall boy. The teenager taunts, “Hi, Mr. Schneider, remember me? I’m that little boy you always used to spank in the third grade!”
Black boys are hit by teachers more than any other demographic. Why is this? Are black boys more unruly than white, Latino and Asian boys and girls? If so, does this mean that bad parenting is more prevalent, percentage-wise, among blacks? Or are black boys hit more because teachers think they could more get away with hitting a black boy than a blonde, blue-eyed white boy or even a black girl? You know the answer.
What if a teacher doesn’t like a particular student? Maybe the student is fat, awkward, has big ears, or his or her parents picked a bone with the teacher at a PTA meeting. The teacher will find an excuse to spank this child no matter how well-behaved he or she is. If hitting is allowed in schools, it will get out of hand. It also won’t be a very good deterrent to bullying amongst kids: “Well, Miss Peabody always hits kids, so why can’t I?”
It’s also a known fact that the most good-looking kids rarely get hit by teachers. Corporal punishment in the school system will never, ever, ever get used fairly, and anyone with half a brain should know this.
When I was in fourth grade, Sister Rose literally punched the backs of any boy who had trouble with math. This is corporal punishment out of control. These boys were not misbehaving. Pardon them if they take a little longer to figure out long division with decimals or some story problem involving pie slices. She never hit the girls, even though they weren’t any smarter in math. Only the boys! Was she abused by her daddy or what?
What if a teacher injures a student? My tenth grade Spanish teacher wouldn’t dare strike the girls, but he’d hit the boys; he once slammed a huge encyclopedia over a boy’s head because the boy was talking. He once bear hugged another boy; not because the boy was out of control, but because the boy was running from him out of fear! The teacher on several occasions actually told the class he was physically abused by his father. He’d recount the time his father picked him up by the feet and slammed him into a wall. So when this teacher hit his students, was it out of love? Bible teachings? Or residual emotional problems caused by his own abusive father? This teacher had a wife. I’m sure he beat her, too.
Lastly, define “corporal.” Is it a spanking with a ping pong paddle, and only the buttocks can be struck? This leaves room for straying, in that a really pissed-off teacher can grab that 60-pound kid’s arm and yank it right out of its socket. The teacher will claim she had to hang on hard to the kid while she paddled him because the kid was trying to get away. So the kid ends up with a dislocated shoulder and huge welts on his upper arm. Or, a teacher could hit a kid so hard on the rump that the kid flies into the wall four feet away and gets his nose shattered. Think about all these ramifications, folks.
