CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

Corporal Punishment

Corporal Punishment

The use of corporal punishment in home and school has been widely debated. Some believe it is a means of discipline while others call it abuse. Corporal punishment is harmful to children. It could lead to emotional and physical problems. Corporal punishment is so readily at hand that it discourages some teachers from trying alternatives.

Educationally, corporal punishment has been generally defined as : the infliction of pain by a teacher or other educational official upon the body of a student as a penalty for doing something which has been disapproved by the punisher (1). Corporal punishment doesn't work. (Bluestein, Jane, 2001)

It does not have a long-lasting effect on behavior, although it creates all kinds of side-effects. The teacher and parent acting as a model, teaches that hitting is a solution to problems and that people can hit if they are big enough and in a position of power. Teachers and parents discount systematic evidence of ineffectiveness of corporal punishment in the literature. Such evidence is often scorned as impractical and theoretical. They ignore their own practical evidence that corporal punishment does not have the desired effect on discipline in a school or home.

There is no evidence that discipline is better when corporal punishment is used, and in many places the schools and homes with the most corporal punishment have had the worst discipline (2). Corporal punishment in the home and school are banned in a number of countries: Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway and Sweden. Bans are currently being debated by the Governments of Germany, Ireland, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. A private member's bill by Canadian Member of Parliament Svend Robinson proposes the repeal of Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code which permits parents to use "reasonable force" when disciplining children. About 20 states in the US prohibit corporal punishment in public schools (3). 30 states continue to authorize corporal punishment in their schools. Though estimating that this problem has been underreported by two to three times, there were over 1 million occurrences identified in the 1986-1987 school year with 10,000-20,000 students requesting subsequent medical treatment. The highest incidence tends to be in the south and southwest (particularly Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Kentucky), while the lowest is in the northeast, where a number of states have outlawed this. Current studies indicate that physical punishment is more common in grades kindergarten throughout 8 (versus high school), in rural schools (versus urban), in boys (versus girls), and in disadvantaged children (versus middle-class and upper-class caucasians) (4).

What Are the Problems of Corporal Punishment? Shaming, humiliating and beating a child are, at the very least, counterproductive. Corporal punishment is an abuse of power. It suggests that might makes right and actually encourages a child to do the same (1). When one brutalizes children, one lowers their self-esteem, teaching them poor self-control, leading them into unsatisfying relationships with others, and in some cases, causing them to be brutalizing ...