According
to the most recent Arkansas Department of Education figures, the state's
public school personnel hit children with a board 1,046 fewer times in 2003/2004
than they did in the 2002/2003 school year. Though the trend
continues in a downward direction, the decline means little more than 2% difference between the 48,068 total instances of corporal punishment in 2002/2003 and the 47,022 paddlings last year. So, Arkansas children continued to
be mistreated and discriminated against as gender, racial/ethnic and special
needs groups were paddled in extreme excess of their proportions of district
student enrollments. In reply to a complaint filed with the Office
for Civil Rights, U. S. Department of Education (November 19, 2002), the
OCR acknowledged that statistical analyses supported our claim that
corporal punishment was being administered disproportionately against African
American, Special Education and male students. However, they deemed
disproportionality alone to be insufficient for initiating an investigation
of discrimination. Under the administration of Secretary of Education
Rod Paige, the OCR was investigating singular complaints of discriminatory
treatment of individuals rather than allegations of unfair treatment of groups.
There
being no empirical evidence of any measurable, therapeutic or educational
value in corporal punishment, it is unethical for this treatment of children
to occur. While proportionate paddling would not be moral either,
its opposite tends to engender the impression of malice and injustice in
more of our children, to list just one of the shortcomings of the practice.
The institutional corporal punishment of children is a base, brutal treatment passed
off as an educational tool; one for which there is no college, pre-service
or in-service training anywhere in our country. It would be absurd to suggest
that there is any standard.
By
its mere permission, the corporal punishment of minor students, as a legitimate
way to treat virtually defenseless and less powerful people, facilitates
the exploitation of policy and the deliberate harm of children. Teacher
training and certification has not achieved the reliability or status of
a genuine security measure and it is not uncommon for "bad" teachers to
be exposed to children for years. Not only is there no screening
mechanism to protect children from potential child abusers, there is no
safeguard in place to identify and remove sexual predators. Providing
license and putting weapons in the hands of potential perpetrators of abuse
seems to disregard the protective aspect of the community’s responsibility
to its children.
When
the corporal punishment of children is prosecuted according to established
policy, with diligent attention to due process, it remains a miserable
way to treat the progeny of our species and exceeds warrant, no matter
what the child's behavior. There is the risk of serious physical
and emotional harm and the near certainty of no positive, educational result.
The degrees of risk are irrelevant in terms of what minimal negative effect
might be considered permissible because there is no degree of long-term
benefit. All presumptions about lasting improvement in behavior are
supported nowhere in the knowledge base of modern educators. Traditional
and moral are not synonymous. That a practice has existed in the
past, is not what makes it right. So students are still being hit
today primarily because it is permitted and because people resist change.
The risks to the children are not justified by any measurable, long-term
benefit.
Modern
classroom teachers possess knowledge of teaching and child management techniques
that do not rely on intentionally hurting their pupils. To select
a method of treatment that always causes, at least, transient pain over
effective, positive alternatives that do not hurt is an unethical choice.
Children do not need to hurt to learn. To the contrary, pain and
discomfort probably inhibit learning. Paddling school children has
never demonstrated more than very temporary control of behavior.
So, if merely temporarily interrupting undesirable behavior is the relevant
goal, then it must be acknowledged that paddling has never demonstrated greater
effectiveness than its positive alternatives. Some of those alternatives
have demonstrated long-term positive change where paddling has not.
Why paddle?
There
is no redeeming result, as far as the children are concerned, that makes
the use of corporal punishment permissible by a compassionate and future
oriented people. The popularity of the method and the confidence
in it are not supported by anything we know about how children learn or
why they behave well. Randy
Cox, LCSW, ACSW NeverHitAChild.ORG email:
rcox@cei.net web
site: www.neverhitachild.org