Things people do to their kids?

Spanking was routinely administered in our high for all kids through 18 years old. Both boys and girls would get butt spanked over their clothes by a female teacher only, using a ruler. Unlike some other schools, no one was ever asked to take their clothes off or other humiliating action in our school. We would be standing straight up, with our hands kept in front of us (NO bending) and we would get one or two spanks for routine misbehavior (such as coming late to class, talking in class etc) immediately in class. Three was reserved for more severe misbehavior, such as caught smoking. I was last spanked in the second semester of my junior year, I was 17 at the time and I still remember the pain from spanking, I got three hits and it almost made me cry. But it was quick and the pain would quickly wear off.

 

My opa never beat my mom, and she talks to him every night....i know that she doesn't hate him at all. I still think that she is full of it for thinking that she respects him for hitting her.
I showed cody the article you posted the link to....I printed it off, and he actually looked pretty interested in it.
I just don't understand how adults can think that hitting a child half their size is ok...I remember my mom saying to me when my sister and i were little and fighting,"kirsten, don't hit your sister, she's half your size." then she would hit me......maske sence? i didn't think so.......

 

barefoot_kirstyn

Our high school students would get 1-3 hits on their butt by a female teacher using a ruler for different kinds of disciplinary misbehavior. I think such a punishment CAN be effective when administered properly. It is quick and memorable, yet quite painful so you will know you'll get it if you misbehave. Having said that, I as a future parent will never resort to physical punishment because I can pay as much personal attention to my children as necessary, I can spend hours with them communicating in words and explaining paying as much individual attention as necessary...but in an institutionalized setting such as high school where there are numerous students with low teacher-student ratios, you just can't afford to dedicate as much individual attention to each student, and some studens have been known to be rather defiant and unorganized. Here, physical punishment comes into play when all persuasion efforts fail (which admittedly are limited in an enviroment enrolling numerous kids) and guess what? it works! It definitely made me (and other students) a lot more organized and disciplined and I am really grateful for that. But I am against physical punishment in families.

 

bullshit!!

If you as a teacher are not able to maintain control of your class and have to revert to physical punishment in order to do so then I am afraid that you are not meant to be a teacher or you haven't been trained enough. You should find alternative ways to deal with misbehaviour in a classroom and engaging the students in the lesson might just be the start of it. If they refuse to engage with you and you give up on them and you punish them physically then I hate to imagine what sort of messages you are giving kids about learning. This is a way way big topic but seriously what you suggest sounds to me like laziness on the teachers part and an inablity to do the job which they have been employed to do, finding some way to get the students involved and engaged in subjects which might not seem as interesting as their friends or whatever else is going on around them at the time because they are teenagers or children but which they will gain so much from if you manage to do so IS your job...not controlling them.

 

Not according to EVERY child psychology professional who has done research in the past 50 years or so. Hurting a child may cause immediate cessation of a behavior, but it has NO long lasting effects on keeping the child from doing that behavior. In fact, kids who are hit become better liars, sneakier and cheaters.

No thanks. I'd rather do things the HARD WAY and have healthy kids, than get immediate results and never be able to trust my kids, and have them know they can't trust me, as people who HIT you are NOT looking out for your best interest.

 

I am a teaching-student, and I have been taught, that hitting is never, ever an option.

 

Seems to me like the act of spanking is an extremeley degrading one, and I don't see how it couldn't be completely humiliating when administered in a public school setting, among all your friends and peers. Bending has nothing to do with it. It's degrading. Like everyone else has said, if a teacher has to stoop to that level just to get some level of respect from their students - they have chosen the wrong profession.

 

Good thing to be taught, Kasten. What I see is that GOOD teachers can control the kids without hitting, and if THEY can, then why can't the others? I see more Phys Ed teachers being called out for hitting than any other type of "teacher." Sheesh. School, IMO, should be about academics and co-operation, not what American children are taught in PE. Your teachers taught you well, Kasten. There is NO room for hitting in the school or in the home.

 

i went to a new school for a few months in grade 1, and i still remember hearing at a speech on the first day about if we did something bad 3 times, we got the strap from the principal (sp?). one time was a warning, second time was sitting out in the hall, and third....yeah.
something seems even MORE messed up with some big, fat guy hitting little kids with a leather strap. *shudders*
i thought that hitting was done away with in schools until i read some of these posts....so sad.

 

<Shudder> That's awful. I didn't know Canada did that only a few years ago. Terrible. In the state of Illinios, a teacher can lose their job for striking a child. A school bus driver was fired just a few days ago for attacking a mentally handicapped SECOND GRADER! It isn't just the teachers.

The bus driver is claiming "we was just messing around." While according to the mother's description, the poor child is suffereing from something like Post Traumatic Stress.

 

stephaniesomewhere

Actually, this punishment was administered for purely disciplinary misbehavior, such as coming late to class, talking in class, smoking, fighting...not for academic ones, such as showing an interest/lack of it in any subject, bad grades etc. Some students would be coming in class late and systematically so, even after short breaks, they lacked proper discipline, no matter how interesting a given teacher was, s/he just wouldn't show up in class on time because s/he was smoking in a bathroom, eating, violating school discipline in many ways...On many many students this worked wonders, they became quite disciplined and organized that they otherwise would not have become.

Maggie Sugar

Sure. There is a long fought debate on this and many schools still use this method of punishment (predominantly in the south/midwest and in *private* schools; some states instituted bans on all sorts of physical punishment).

I'd rather do things the hard way as well, I agree, I will never ever consider physically punishing my children because I have a way of communicating the same using words, I just gave an example of a, how to say a partly cost-effective but effective, in my experience, of way of disciplining a large number of kids in an institutionalized setting en masse, believe it or not, it did improve our class attendance in our school dramatically.


hummblebee

Actually, one way of leading students to comply is the humiliation part, not necessarily the pain part; but if you still don't comply, chronically, then the pain part carries a greater weight, that's what the schoold admin would say, burning your butt after burning your conscious. I mentioned bending because in our school they were actually quite lenient on us, in many southern/midwestern private schools students are stripped off of their clothes and asked to bend over the principals table whatever..that's way more humiliating. Belieive it or not, many privates still do this. Some schools that gave up this right want it back.

 

i was swatted quite a bit growing up. i'm not a bully. i kinda resent the implication that children brought up "old school" end up violent bullies or lacking self respect who want to war with other nations or whatnot. my brothers & sister, husband & sister in law, as well as every member of both our families earned a few butt swattings. not a single violent person among all of us. my father was beaten bloody as a child & therefore became violent for a time, but overcame it with love and support. having seen & experienced serious physical abuse, i see a HUGE difference between a slap on the wrist or bottom and violence against children. i don't hit my child maily because i don't think her disposition and relations with this family require it. but i've seen parents who won't swat their child manipulate and deride with a sweet as honey tone of voice that i find to be terrifying.

 

I have never heard of people being punished physically in school for academic reasons excep for the bad old days (writing with your left hand for example) ...what you referred to is what I thought you meant. There are other approaches to such problem situations so I don't believe that fear and violence solve these and I do believe that punishing children this way makes them disengage with the subject, the teacher and potentially the whole schooling experience. Of course these alternative approaches are quite often hard work for everyone involved and that can be challenging.
also in reply to mynameiskc I don't think that it is inevitable that hitting a child means they will 100 percent grow up with problems but if there are alternative ways that can achieve the same results then I figure that it is good for us as a society to strive to do so in order to protect those that do end up damaged from such situations.

 

stephaniesomewhere

OK.
There are other approaches indeed. Some schools offer a choice among temporary expulsion, waiting out a class, probation, mandatory library sessions...and a swat/puddle/ruler...ours did not, but some schools do. I think these other methods of punishment are totally counterproductive and only aggravate a defiant student's position in class, both academic and disciplinary and is not a correcitve course of action, IMO. I think punishment should be quick and relevant and some really defiant students could benefit from this, IMO. Well at least in our school experience, a couple hits on the butt did not lead the students to disengage with the subject, no student, no one that I know held grudges against the teachers, because everyone knew this was a standard procedure, nothing personal. It was either you and your being disciplined and organized most of the time or you and your butt aching from pain; the teacher, as a person, was distanced and disengaged to a large extent. Of course, ideally, it would be best to drive students toward compliance through persuasion but this is not always possible where there are numerous kids having different backgrounds. The ruler provided that kind of a common denominator in our school.

mynameiskc

Absolutely. If we had bruises after slaps or it was meant to be a real humiliation such as having to drop your pants (that would be some sort of a sexual crime as well) but believe it or not many private schools do still follow this and some even use multiple slaps, a dozen or sth uhhhhhh, that would be waaaaay overdoing it, counterproductive.

 

None of those people in your family see anything wrong with using fear and intimidation to control a child's behavior? Do they see anything wrong with a man using fear and intimidation to control his wife's behavior? If so, what's the difference? honestly, I want to understand. I was violently physically disciplined as a child, and I don't see a swat on the behind as any different than getting beaten black and blue, as far as the psychological effects it has on a person. Just the threat of physical violence is abusive, even without the hitting. But I do agree with you, emotional and psychological abuse is every bit as wrong as physical abuse, sometimes it's worse.

 

before I start I have to say that maybe we aren't going to ever reach a middle ground on this but thankyou for the debate and helpng me to clarify some of what I think and have to say on the matter!

 

ANYONE who does something like this to a child should be charged with not only emotional, physical but also SEXUAL abuse. People who do this to CHILDREN are most likely getting a sexual kick out of it. Take their PANTS and clothes off? What the fuck is that? It's a sexual assault.

 

No, what they learned was to sneakily hide their less than acceptable behavior. IF physical punishment actually changes someone's thought processes (instead of what is usually does, which is to have the kid make sure they don't get caught) then it falls into the realm of brainwashing.

Hitting is NEVER an option. Yes, even good parents occasionally slip up, but in a good parental envioment, the child is told "That was a mistake I was wrong. I am sorry that will never happen again." But, in a school hitting is NOT an option. Just the fact that many GOOD teachers NEVER have to resort to physical harm means that is simply that the person who resorts to VIOLENCE is a SHITTY teacher and should NOT be trusted around children. If ONE teacher can have order without hitting than ALL teachers can have order without harm. If a child is incorragable, then the child needs psycholgical counseling, not MORE harm.

 

stephaniesomewhere

This is an assumption and not relevant; we don't discuss here how the teachers feel about their proposed roles in the school system.

Yes, that would be the best thing to do, but that would require a process in which nearly "ideal" students are educated.

Maggie Sugar

Yes, that's what I believe it is, as I stated in my previous post. And yet, not too few schools still punish their students using this method, unfortunately. That is outrageous. That is not healthy.

Maggie Sugar

Maybe not thought processes but some careless, mechanical bad habits could be changed and for good. If a teacher has a defiant student who is always late in class, foregets notebooks, pens doesn't go into the classroom, after numerous verbal warnings this is done chronically, what can the teacher do to remedy the situation? Became a second set of parents perhaps?!

I think it is good parents that should not slip up either way because their children are their paramount concern. Whereas in an instiutionalized setting teachers have the obligation to teach and to maintain a requisite amount of order and if they fail at that MANY kids, and not their kids, will suffer, they can achieve the good results through good strategies but in practice they find that their good strategies sometimes do not hold water not only becuase they are too costly to implement, but also because their good strategies are tantamount to losing control and, by extension, is detrimental to the soundess of an environment in which good kids, not just bad kids, are also educated and the two groups could not be practically isolated.

 

it's not about being in control of another person's behavior. That is the essence of abuse, control. When your babies are school aged, you may very well understand what it is we are trying to say. or maybe the school system did such a good job of institutionalizing you to the point where you think the horrible things they do to people is not only justified, but a good thing. To me, you seem to be much brighter than your average sheep. There is no place in my children's education for being taught how to blindly accept orders and never question authority.