Ban Corporal Punishment in NC Schools
16 March 2007 - 27 אדר 5767 by Huw
Fr Rob writes about a bill recently introduced in the NC Legislature to ban corporal punishment in NC Schools. While I know schools are worse now than they were several years ago… and I know that some of the right try to pin the blame on “sparing the rod and spoiling the child” the truth of the mater is that schools here in NC - where paddling is still legal - are just as bad as they are anywhere else.
Some on the left will say something about a child’s rights and, although I don’t buy that logic at all, it would take a truly blind parent to imagine that the line between proper punishment and physical abuse is far easier to cross with the adult involved is not the child’s Mom or Dad. Were I to accept the logic of some parents who say they must spank… it does not follow that they should give that right to other adults. (I don’t believe in in loco parentis.)
Fr Rob, a parent himself, urges us to write the our legislature. You know, I don’t usually take much of a political stand, but… I’m with him on this. I’m not a parent, but given my own experience with teachers who seemed to like to punish me for getting beat up by bullies rather than punishing the bullies (the logic was expressed as “he needs to learn how to be a man”) I tend to imagine teachers and school officers are not the people I want to have handing out justice.
