Violence in the name of discipline

THE EDITOR: So another child has been killed. I wonder what the corporal punishment advocates are saying now. There was such an outcry when corporal punishment was to be abolished in schools, from teachers, principals, parents, politicians and columnists, all claiming that they themselves had been hit in the name of education and look how well they turned out. Why isn’t there the same outcry for little Isaac, who didn’t reach two years old because someone’s fist split his belly open? Dr David Bratt made a very good point a few weeks ago when he wrote that so many of us in this country have been abused so routinely that we have all become numb to it and no longer recognise when it is happening. Like it or not, our continued over-reliance on corporal punishment as a form of discipline, the ingrained belief that it is all right to be violent to children for the right reasons, is part of that abuse. There is an illusion that there is a “right” way and a “right” reason to hit a child as opposed to a “wrong” way and a “wrong” reason. The Ministry of Education subscribes to this illusion with its regulation, which states that corporal punishment in schools is to be approved by the Principal and administered by a designated member of staff. The truth is that that regulation was never followed and even if it was, it’s simply an attempt to disguise violence by saying that it was appropriately done.

Safe violence — what a contradiction in terms. The double-speak never fooled the children’s bodies, on which the violence was, and continues to be perpetrated. Violence on a child’s body is violence, and the truth is that most teachers hitting a child hit as the first resort, not the last. They hit in anger to hurt, not to “correct” or “discipline” or any of those other words for officially sanctioned abuse. I can hear the corporal punishment apologists swiftly saying, Oh, but that was  an extreme case, this is definitely not discipline, this was abuse! Would it have been abuse if Isaac had been damaged but had lived and it had never gotten into the newspapers? What kind of human being would have been produced by that treatment over time? Maybe the kind of human being who can shoot a policeman for his gun at age sixteen and ride off on his bike. Maybe the kind of human being who thinks it’s wrong to leave the scene of a crime without leaving a corpse behind. Maybe the kind of human being who can stab somebody over a dollar or a disagreement or a “cut-eye.” Maybe the kind of human being who has been terrorising our lives through criminal activity for the past several years. Maybe this is one of the answers to the big mystery about where these heartless violent young criminals could possibly have come from.

Did most of you out there know that corporal punishment of children by all caretakers, including parents, was banned in Sweden in 1979? A Save the Children study done in 2000 found that youth crime rates did not rise overall and actually dropped for some crimes, that the proportion of young people using drugs and alcohol dropped significantly and that the suicide rate for the young also decreased. Most importantly, only one child had died at the hands of a parent because of physical abuse since the ban came into effect. So the society didn’t break down. Young people didn’t go crazy when they were no longer being battered. Some types of crime actually decreased. And parents stopped killing their children. So if there are some of you out there who still feel that it’s worth a few children’s lives to continue the violence in the name of “discipline”, here’s to you, and God help all the other little Isaac Thomases.

KAREN MOORE
Champs Fleurs