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From the comments my views will definitely be in the minority here. Personal experience: Every school I attended through 12th grade had corporal punishment in

From the comments my views will definitely be in the minority here. Personal experience: Every school I attended through 12th grade had corporal punishment in place. In 5th grade I was punished by a Catholic Nun who broke a ruler over my hands as they were laying flat on the desk. It was deserved and fixed the problem at hand and by example to the other students. (haha no pun intended). I actually have a fond memory of it now as they made my parents pay for the broken ruler. We laugh about it now and then. It happened again in HS and remember being scared shitless because it was being administered by a teacher with a good rep for painful swats. It solved the issues that time as well. Neither instance caused any psychological damage to me(that i’m aware of) and helped keep our learning environment a place where people can actually go to learn. Corporal punishment is no longer practiced in my state. I would support it if it came back. It’s an effective tool.

eh9 4y ago
I don’t want to speak to your personal trauma, but child abuse is never an effective tool.
- slibhb 4y ago
  Defining corporeal punishment as "child abuse" is incorrect.
  - cschmatzler 4y ago
    Violence is always abuse, and it’s significantly worse when an adult is targeting a child.
    - Supermancho 4y ago
      > Violence is always abuse, So any form of self defense is abuse? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Trivializing complex issues is the kneejerk response for many, but there isn't a simple moral line of thinking that billions of people have overlooked.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        Yes, it's abusive, and with self defence that is the point: your attacker has deprived you of safety and of another immediate recourse, so you're forced to lower yourself to their level. It doesn't make it good; it makes it necessary, and for that reason we often consider it legitimate. If an adult tried to assault my son, and he hit back, I wouldn't consider it good, but I would be proud he felt able to defend himself against a violent attacker. Even if that attacker was a teacher.
        Supermancho 4y ago
        > > > Violence is always abuse, > > So any form of self defense is abuse? > Yes, it's abusive Abuse is a term used to describe impropriety of action. The idea that impropriety is used to counter impropriety is not coherent. Self-defense is proper (suitable, appropriate, etc) use of force, insofar as an individual values safety of their person. Self-defense is necessarily not abuse. I dont think any amount of rewording will change this.
        vidarh 4y ago
        Since English is my second language, I checked a few dictionaries just now to check if I got what I intended wrong. Only one (Cambridge) restricted abuse to only the sense of impropriety of action. The others included variations such as physical maltreatment (Merriam Webster, American Heritage Dictionary), to treat in a harmful, injurious, or offensive way (Collins / dictionary.com), "Abuse of someone is cruel and violent treatment of them" (Collins, collinsdictionary.com). If we restrict it to the impropriety of action, then I agree it does not apply to self defence, but that was not the meaning of my reply. I of course can't speak to the poster of the original statement, so if we interpret it as impropriety of action, I agree with you; in the broader sense allowed by the other dictionaries I stand by what I wrote.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    If it's abuse when done to an adult, it's abuse when done to a child. Doing any of this to an adult would be assault or battery in most countries. Of anyone hurt my child that way and the police didn't do anything, you can bet I'd find a way to give the abusers a taste of their own medicine.
    - slibhb 4y ago
      It's always funny how, when you engage with the "kinder, gentler" crowd, they immediately prove themselves morally unsophisticated. Striking a child is abuse and if your child was struck, you would take revenge by hitting the perpetrator. Okay.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        If my child is struck and there's no legal recourse, then yes, I would lower myself to their level. If society creates an unsafe environment, then sometimes violence is necessary as a means to fight an abusive regime and cause change. That does not mean it's a nice thing - last resorts seldom are. That you think I'm the "kinder, gentler" crowd is your mistake. I just don't like injustice, and punching down against someone unable to defend themselves is one of the worst forms of injustice.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - eh9 4y ago
    Child abuse is any physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment or neglect of a child. Corporal punishment can be harmful to children and may lead to long-term negative outcomes, such as increased aggression, mental health problems, and poor academic performance. That’s not to speak to who’s enforcing it and on who.
    - slibhb 4y ago
      Parents are always experimenting on their children. Faddish observational studies reflect the biases of the researchers. Also, there are legal and cultural definitions of child abuse and, at least where I'm from, corporeal punishment isn't necessarily abusive.
      - eh9 4y ago
        Regardless of cultural norms or what parents might try, it’s violence against people who can’t consent. Violence is always abuse.
        slibhb 4y ago
        Did God deliver you this information?
        zaphirplane 4y ago
        Statement of absolute are always wrong What!
    - Erem 4y ago
      By this definition, depending on who gets to define "mistreatment", any negative reinforcement at all would count as abuse, not just corporal punishment.
      - eh9 4y ago
        Yes. Physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment. Why would anyone need to engage in that kind of “negative reinforcement”?
drsnow 4y ago
If a teacher broke a damn ruler over my hands, let alone making my family pay for it when we grew up broke, I have to say, I would swing on her.
- roamerz 4y ago
  Beings that this was an approved and accepted method of discipline where I attended school your swing would have landed you an expulsion and hopefully a charge of assault by the authorities. If you happen to be a male your comment on swinging on a lady has significance beyond your understanding.
  - drsnow 4y ago
    You can't possibly be serious. Her assault came first, it's just that it's somehow acceptable to you. It is perfectly reasonable to respond to assault with violence of your own to dissuade further assault especially if it is the only way to ensure that teacher doesn't break a ruler over your hands and possibly fracture a knuckle again.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    You realize that in most states if someone broke a ruler smacking you with it, that would constitute an assault charge and self defense would be considered reasonable. The only difference is that adults are allowed to do so while children aren't in your example. What you're telling people is that assault by the state against children is acceptable.
isthisthingon99 4y ago
Same. We've been smacking kids for tens of thousands of years to protect them and society and somehow we went to the moon. There is a difference between smacking kids and abusing them. I got smacked, but in a way that was traumatizing(?) as I remember every second of it decades later. Still, it did actually encourage me to improve the thing I got smacked about and probably led to me being as successful as I am (such as it were.)
diego_moita 4y ago
[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Can you maybe oppose physical discipline in schools on its own merits, instead of dragging in every other issue under the sun?
  - diego_moita 4y ago
    > physical discipline in schools George Orwell would love this New Speak of yours, for he was also subject to such "physical discipline" and had no fond memories of it.
vidarh 4y ago
It is fairly normal for victims of violence to seek to explain away the abuse they were subjected to as deserved or necessary when carried out by someone in authority over them. It doesn't change that it is harmful abuse. I'm sorry you were subjected to that kind of abuse, even though you believe it was justified. There's nothing to suggest it serves a legitimate purpose.
- slibhb 4y ago
  > There's nothing to suggest it serves a legitimate purpose. Well there's nothing if you disregard personal testimony as stockholm syndrome.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    If it served a legitimate purpose you'd expect actual research showing it, not having to rely on the accounts of a subset of victims.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Well there’s nothing if you disregard personal testimony as Stockholm syndrome I don’t disregard anything as Stockholm Syndrome, since that doesn’t exist. However, I do disregard anecdotal conclusory testimony about causative processes, as a general rule. I’ll accept testimony about facts plausibly within the knowledge of the person testifying as being (barring special reason for suspicion on those points) as trustworthy as the person testifying.
    - slibhb 4y ago
      You disregard anecdote when it clashes with your priors.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > You disregard anecdote when it clashes with your priors. No, I disregard anecdote to the extent it makes claims which are conclusory rather than observational. I weight anecdote very lightly in any case, though.
schemescape 4y ago
(Deleting, as I shouldn't have joined this conversation, but I can't seem to delete a post that has a reply. Apologies for the loss of context!)
- MrOwnPut 4y ago
  It's their personal anecdote.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
It can be an effective tool. Or it can be abused (and, in fact, be abuse). My own memory is of the time I wasn't hit. I was in elementary school. The principal was out shoveling snow off of the sidewalk where it crossed a driveway. I was out on recess, and I hit her with a snowball. She didn't hit me, though school policy allowed it at the time. Instead, she just had me shovel the snow. (Duh... what did I think was going to happen?)
teaearlgraycold 4y ago
I can say that, for me, being told by someone I respected that I was doing something wrong was always enough to stop poor behavior. Hitting a child to teach them could be better than some alternatives. But it's definitely not the best approach. It seems like an option for those without any idea on what else to do.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Violence is the lsst resort of the incompetent (asimov). I am also pretty sure that if violence is the only thing you respect, it's the only lever others have
- rayiner 4y ago
  Okay, now do a kid with bottom quartile impulse control.
theGnuMe 4y ago
"We don't hit" as the teacher spanks you.
sammalloy 4y ago
> It’s an effective tool Said no modern, respectable scientist who has studied the phenomenon within the last thirty years.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > Said no modern, respectable scientist who has studied the phenomenon within the last thirty years. ...said some guy on a forum. From 2006: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1284596.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1284596.pdf https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featured-in-spanking-stories/ https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featur... - "There is general consensus that corporal punishment is effective in getting children to comply immediately while at the same time there is caution from child abuse researchers that corporal punishment by its nature can escalate into physical maltreatment," - E. T. Gershoff The meta-analysis study that "decided things" in 2021: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34197808/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34197808/ A critique to that point in 2022: A Response to Heilmann et al.’s (2021) Narrative Review - https://psyarxiv.com/5xbnm/download?format=pdf https://psyarxiv.com/5xbnm/download?format=pdf Much like Abraham Wald pointed out in WWII, many studies are unintentionally magnifying the statistical outliers incorrectly. As Greg Wilson once said - (summarized) Gender inequity in science being biologically gender influenced is settled as false. The efficacy of corporal punishment is a scottish verdict. The efficacy and/or benefit of corporal punishment, is undecided.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The first link you provided, which does not appear to support corporal punishment, does not contain the string you quoted; in fact, the word "corporal" appears in it only twice. The last link you provided is a methodological critique of another study, and its authors are of questionable authority (for instance, a dev psych professor at a private Christian college).
    - Supermancho 4y ago
      > The first link you provided, which does not appear to support corporal punishment, does not contain the string you quoted; in fact, the word "corporal" appears in it only twice. Gershoff's contributions to the debate are not a singular paper. https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featured-in-spanking-stories/ https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featur... includes a response from Robert E. Larzelere, Ph.D., which quotes Gershoff as the source of the quote referenced.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
czx4f4bd 4y ago
> remember being scared shitless > Neither instance caused any psychological damage Really now? I would consider acute fear to be, at the very least, psychologically detrimental, if not to you then to the vast majority of people. Generally, fear is not conducive to a healthy learning environment.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Right. Should well-behaved students fear their uncontrollable peers?
  - k0k0r0 4y ago
    This comment seems to implicitly assume a) that corporal punishment is the only or only effective way to ensure nobody or at least less students have to fear other peers b) corporal punishment is any effective at all c) the necessity to fear some peers has a strong connection to whether they are 'controllable' All three claims seem to be disputed.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Have you been to an American school lately? If you have a better solution I’m all ears. Because whatever we are doing (and it’s overwhelmingly not corporal punishment, even in the states where it is legal) is not working. The inmates are running the asylum.
      - bradlys 4y ago
        Better parenting. Almost all of it stems from homelife, bub. Parents are notoriously shitty people.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
If an adult breaks voluntarily an item on me to cause pain, the instinct is to sue (a form of force), or respond with force (depends extremely on context) or flee. I don't think the situation you describe seems healthy. I have at least 2 memories where I have been spanked really hard from my parents due to being misunderstood. What's the consequence of that? Who is going to punish the parent? In children's view, that's a major punishment for no correct reason, what does it teaches about law?
rayiner 4y ago
I agree. I’m an Asian immigrant and like most Asians my parents used corporal punishment sometimes and it was an effective tool. (Relevant: https://fb.watch/iaTKO2jJnB/?mibextid=vTn5qL https://fb.watch/iaTKO2jJnB/?mibextid=vTn5qL.) I don’t use corporal punishment with my kids, because my wife is a white American, and well we’ll see how they turn out. There is a rational argument for corporal punishment of kids. A human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25. You can’t reason with kids. There is a place for physical consequences that kids can understand with their limited cognitive capabilities. The move to ban corporal punishment doesn’t seem to have produced equally effective alternatives. At least from my experience in America, it seems like parents just simply put up with poorly behaved kids. It’s a sort of luxury belief. In a subsistence economy you need kids to behave because mistakes can be fatal. In rich country, you can put up with poorly behaved kids because you just have so much margin.
- tptacek 4y ago
  According to Gershoff (cited elsewhere on this thread as well), in a study of 20,000 kindergarteners, Asian American families are the cohort least likely to employ corporal punishment. I'm sure your kids will be fine; they have lots going for them.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The Reddit thread on the study you’re referring to aptly summarizes the problems with it: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-american-parents-dont-spank-their-kids/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-a... One, this seems to rely on GSS data, which is conducted only in English and Spanish. Just 44% of for example foreign born Chinese Americans are proficient in English. So the GSS data is going to heavily skew towards assimilated, affluent Asians. Two, the survey question is idiomatic English. It refers to a “good hard spanking.” I don’t think any of my immigrant family would say they do that to their kids, even they do use physical discipline. Non-native English speakers are going to be much less likely to understand what “hard” (or even “spanking”) means in this context. Three, the survey is of Asian Americans, not immigrants. A survey of Latinos showed that the percentage that use corporal punishment drops dramatically in the second generation. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true for Asian Americans also. But by the second generation, Asians enjoy no advantages in outcomes relative to other native born Americans. Apart from that, even Asians who don’t use physical punishment use “socio emotive” discipline that people in this thread would deem emotional abuse: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-american-parents-dont-spank-their-kids/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-a... What’s your standard for “fine?” It’s shocking how hard it is to keep kids from sopping up the worst aspects of American culture. Unfortunately I think there’s a good chance that one of the three will end up childless, unmarried, or divorced. Where I’m from I would have a reasonable expectation that none of those three would happen.
kashunstva 4y ago
> It’s an effective tool. And if effectiveness were the only criterion against which to judge an act, then maybe one would be justified in supporting violence and threats of violence against children. (Although even there, in aggregate, I’m skeptical that corporal punishment is effective.) But in any case, not all effective actions are morally sound.
- tptacek 4y ago
  And you're right to be skeptical. There's evidence that it's an effective tool for securing short-term compliance, but the consensus, among dozens of studies, is that it's positively correlated with bad long-term outcomes; most famously, aggression and domestic violence, but also mental health problems.
seba_dos1 4y ago
> (that i’m aware of) Stressing this out is enough of a reply.
kaba0 4y ago
That’s quite the rose gold view.
mharig 4y ago
I got beaten once in school by a teacher, and it was well deserved and fixed the problem at hand. But my mother told me once, that when she was in school her teacher was fixated at one girl and did beat her often and mostly for no good reason. The girl was from a poor family, and my mother was upset by the unjustice, but never spoke up, IIRC. So YMMV. At the end, I think such occasional injustice is the lesser evil compared to the sheepish society and nanny states that are the consequence of the pathetic antiviolent decadence we have nowadays in most of the nation states.
- thiht 4y ago
  > pathetic antiviolent decadence Care to elaborate?
  - mharig 4y ago
    Is this really necessary? The antiviolence should be clear reading the most comments to the original post. Denying the violent part of the nature of the monkey horde Homo sapiens is pathetic. And that in all industrialised nations - if not in all else as well-, throw-away society and obscene consumerism are the dominant hype should be obvious.
thiht 4y ago
> a Catholic Nun who broke a ruler over my hands as they were laying flat on the desk What the fuck kind of shitty human being is this? Can you even imagine doing that? Putting someone’s hands flat on a desk and hitting as hard as you can with a ruler? That’s some next level twisted psychopathic shit here. > I actually have a fond memory of it now There’s your psychological damage. That’s not a normal reaction, even years after. > It was deserved and fixed the problem at hand and by example to the other students 2 questions for you: - did it fix anything? Did you learn a lesson or were you just scared of getting caught? I guarantee the only lesson other students learned was « don’t get caught » - assuming it fixed the issue somehow, was physical abuse the only way to do that?
skedaddle 4y ago
It's highly variable. I didn't go to a Catholic school but where I grew up there were religious camps parents could send their kids to, where they could be hit. Some of those kids had problems with drugs or aggression, but others were just queer in one sense or another. If the Catholics can hit then so can the Pentecostal and Baptist and Mormon teachers as well, and you might not have appreciated their discipline as much.

eh9 4y ago

I don’t want to speak to your personal trauma, but child abuse is never an effective tool.

slibhb 4y ago
Defining corporeal punishment as "child abuse" is incorrect.
- cschmatzler 4y ago
  Violence is always abuse, and it’s significantly worse when an adult is targeting a child.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    > Violence is always abuse, So any form of self defense is abuse? I'm not sure you've thought this through. Trivializing complex issues is the kneejerk response for many, but there isn't a simple moral line of thinking that billions of people have overlooked.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      Yes, it's abusive, and with self defence that is the point: your attacker has deprived you of safety and of another immediate recourse, so you're forced to lower yourself to their level. It doesn't make it good; it makes it necessary, and for that reason we often consider it legitimate. If an adult tried to assault my son, and he hit back, I wouldn't consider it good, but I would be proud he felt able to defend himself against a violent attacker. Even if that attacker was a teacher.
      - Supermancho 4y ago
        > > > Violence is always abuse, > > So any form of self defense is abuse? > Yes, it's abusive Abuse is a term used to describe impropriety of action. The idea that impropriety is used to counter impropriety is not coherent. Self-defense is proper (suitable, appropriate, etc) use of force, insofar as an individual values safety of their person. Self-defense is necessarily not abuse. I dont think any amount of rewording will change this.
        vidarh 4y ago
        Since English is my second language, I checked a few dictionaries just now to check if I got what I intended wrong. Only one (Cambridge) restricted abuse to only the sense of impropriety of action. The others included variations such as physical maltreatment (Merriam Webster, American Heritage Dictionary), to treat in a harmful, injurious, or offensive way (Collins / dictionary.com), "Abuse of someone is cruel and violent treatment of them" (Collins, collinsdictionary.com). If we restrict it to the impropriety of action, then I agree it does not apply to self defence, but that was not the meaning of my reply. I of course can't speak to the poster of the original statement, so if we interpret it as impropriety of action, I agree with you; in the broader sense allowed by the other dictionaries I stand by what I wrote.
- vidarh 4y ago
  If it's abuse when done to an adult, it's abuse when done to a child. Doing any of this to an adult would be assault or battery in most countries. Of anyone hurt my child that way and the police didn't do anything, you can bet I'd find a way to give the abusers a taste of their own medicine.
  - slibhb 4y ago
    It's always funny how, when you engage with the "kinder, gentler" crowd, they immediately prove themselves morally unsophisticated. Striking a child is abuse and if your child was struck, you would take revenge by hitting the perpetrator. Okay.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      If my child is struck and there's no legal recourse, then yes, I would lower myself to their level. If society creates an unsafe environment, then sometimes violence is necessary as a means to fight an abusive regime and cause change. That does not mean it's a nice thing - last resorts seldom are. That you think I'm the "kinder, gentler" crowd is your mistake. I just don't like injustice, and punching down against someone unable to defend themselves is one of the worst forms of injustice.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eh9 4y ago
  Child abuse is any physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment or neglect of a child. Corporal punishment can be harmful to children and may lead to long-term negative outcomes, such as increased aggression, mental health problems, and poor academic performance. That’s not to speak to who’s enforcing it and on who.
  - slibhb 4y ago
    Parents are always experimenting on their children. Faddish observational studies reflect the biases of the researchers. Also, there are legal and cultural definitions of child abuse and, at least where I'm from, corporeal punishment isn't necessarily abusive.
    - eh9 4y ago
      Regardless of cultural norms or what parents might try, it’s violence against people who can’t consent. Violence is always abuse.
      - slibhb 4y ago
        Did God deliver you this information?
      - zaphirplane 4y ago
        Statement of absolute are always wrong What!
  - Erem 4y ago
    By this definition, depending on who gets to define "mistreatment", any negative reinforcement at all would count as abuse, not just corporal punishment.
    - eh9 4y ago
      Yes. Physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment. Why would anyone need to engage in that kind of “negative reinforcement”?

drsnow 4y ago

If a teacher broke a damn ruler over my hands, let alone making my family pay for it when we grew up broke, I have to say, I would swing on her.

roamerz 4y ago
Beings that this was an approved and accepted method of discipline where I attended school your swing would have landed you an expulsion and hopefully a charge of assault by the authorities. If you happen to be a male your comment on swinging on a lady has significance beyond your understanding.
- drsnow 4y ago
  You can't possibly be serious. Her assault came first, it's just that it's somehow acceptable to you. It is perfectly reasonable to respond to assault with violence of your own to dissuade further assault especially if it is the only way to ensure that teacher doesn't break a ruler over your hands and possibly fracture a knuckle again.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  You realize that in most states if someone broke a ruler smacking you with it, that would constitute an assault charge and self defense would be considered reasonable. The only difference is that adults are allowed to do so while children aren't in your example. What you're telling people is that assault by the state against children is acceptable.

isthisthingon99 4y ago

Same. We've been smacking kids for tens of thousands of years to protect them and society and somehow we went to the moon. There is a difference between smacking kids and abusing them. I got smacked, but in a way that was traumatizing(?) as I remember every second of it decades later. Still, it did actually encourage me to improve the thing I got smacked about and probably led to me being as successful as I am (such as it were.)

diego_moita 4y ago

[flagged]

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Can you maybe oppose physical discipline in schools on its own merits, instead of dragging in every other issue under the sun?
- diego_moita 4y ago
  > physical discipline in schools George Orwell would love this New Speak of yours, for he was also subject to such "physical discipline" and had no fond memories of it.

vidarh 4y ago

It is fairly normal for victims of violence to seek to explain away the abuse they were subjected to as deserved or necessary when carried out by someone in authority over them. It doesn't change that it is harmful abuse. I'm sorry you were subjected to that kind of abuse, even though you believe it was justified. There's nothing to suggest it serves a legitimate purpose.

slibhb 4y ago
> There's nothing to suggest it serves a legitimate purpose. Well there's nothing if you disregard personal testimony as stockholm syndrome.
- vidarh 4y ago
  If it served a legitimate purpose you'd expect actual research showing it, not having to rely on the accounts of a subset of victims.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Well there’s nothing if you disregard personal testimony as Stockholm syndrome I don’t disregard anything as Stockholm Syndrome, since that doesn’t exist. However, I do disregard anecdotal conclusory testimony about causative processes, as a general rule. I’ll accept testimony about facts plausibly within the knowledge of the person testifying as being (barring special reason for suspicion on those points) as trustworthy as the person testifying.
  - slibhb 4y ago
    You disregard anecdote when it clashes with your priors.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > You disregard anecdote when it clashes with your priors. No, I disregard anecdote to the extent it makes claims which are conclusory rather than observational. I weight anecdote very lightly in any case, though.

schemescape 4y ago

(Deleting, as I shouldn't have joined this conversation, but I can't seem to delete a post that has a reply. Apologies for the loss of context!)

MrOwnPut 4y ago
It's their personal anecdote.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

It can be an effective tool. Or it can be abused (and, in fact, be abuse). My own memory is of the time I wasn't hit. I was in elementary school. The principal was out shoveling snow off of the sidewalk where it crossed a driveway. I was out on recess, and I hit her with a snowball. She didn't hit me, though school policy allowed it at the time. Instead, she just had me shovel the snow. (Duh... what did I think was going to happen?)

teaearlgraycold 4y ago

I can say that, for me, being told by someone I respected that I was doing something wrong was always enough to stop poor behavior. Hitting a child to teach them could be better than some alternatives. But it's definitely not the best approach. It seems like an option for those without any idea on what else to do.

readthenotes1 4y ago
Violence is the lsst resort of the incompetent (asimov). I am also pretty sure that if violence is the only thing you respect, it's the only lever others have
rayiner 4y ago
Okay, now do a kid with bottom quartile impulse control.

theGnuMe 4y ago

"We don't hit" as the teacher spanks you.

sammalloy 4y ago

> It’s an effective tool Said no modern, respectable scientist who has studied the phenomenon within the last thirty years.

Supermancho 4y ago
> Said no modern, respectable scientist who has studied the phenomenon within the last thirty years. ...said some guy on a forum. From 2006: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1284596.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1284596.pdf https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featured-in-spanking-stories/ https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featur... - "There is general consensus that corporal punishment is effective in getting children to comply immediately while at the same time there is caution from child abuse researchers that corporal punishment by its nature can escalate into physical maltreatment," - E. T. Gershoff The meta-analysis study that "decided things" in 2021: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34197808/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34197808/ A critique to that point in 2022: A Response to Heilmann et al.’s (2021) Narrative Review - https://psyarxiv.com/5xbnm/download?format=pdf https://psyarxiv.com/5xbnm/download?format=pdf Much like Abraham Wald pointed out in WWII, many studies are unintentionally magnifying the statistical outliers incorrectly. As Greg Wilson once said - (summarized) Gender inequity in science being biologically gender influenced is settled as false. The efficacy of corporal punishment is a scottish verdict. The efficacy and/or benefit of corporal punishment, is undecided.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The first link you provided, which does not appear to support corporal punishment, does not contain the string you quoted; in fact, the word "corporal" appears in it only twice. The last link you provided is a methodological critique of another study, and its authors are of questionable authority (for instance, a dev psych professor at a private Christian college).
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    > The first link you provided, which does not appear to support corporal punishment, does not contain the string you quoted; in fact, the word "corporal" appears in it only twice. Gershoff's contributions to the debate are not a singular paper. https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featured-in-spanking-stories/ https://www.unmc.edu/newsroom/2002/06/28/dr-larzelere-featur... includes a response from Robert E. Larzelere, Ph.D., which quotes Gershoff as the source of the quote referenced.

deleted 4y ago

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czx4f4bd 4y ago

> remember being scared shitless > Neither instance caused any psychological damage Really now? I would consider acute fear to be, at the very least, psychologically detrimental, if not to you then to the vast majority of people. Generally, fear is not conducive to a healthy learning environment.

readthenotes1 4y ago
Right. Should well-behaved students fear their uncontrollable peers?
- k0k0r0 4y ago
  This comment seems to implicitly assume a) that corporal punishment is the only or only effective way to ensure nobody or at least less students have to fear other peers b) corporal punishment is any effective at all c) the necessity to fear some peers has a strong connection to whether they are 'controllable' All three claims seem to be disputed.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Have you been to an American school lately? If you have a better solution I’m all ears. Because whatever we are doing (and it’s overwhelmingly not corporal punishment, even in the states where it is legal) is not working. The inmates are running the asylum.
    - bradlys 4y ago
      Better parenting. Almost all of it stems from homelife, bub. Parents are notoriously shitty people.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

If an adult breaks voluntarily an item on me to cause pain, the instinct is to sue (a form of force), or respond with force (depends extremely on context) or flee. I don't think the situation you describe seems healthy. I have at least 2 memories where I have been spanked really hard from my parents due to being misunderstood. What's the consequence of that? Who is going to punish the parent? In children's view, that's a major punishment for no correct reason, what does it teaches about law?

rayiner 4y ago

I agree. I’m an Asian immigrant and like most Asians my parents used corporal punishment sometimes and it was an effective tool. (Relevant: https://fb.watch/iaTKO2jJnB/?mibextid=vTn5qL https://fb.watch/iaTKO2jJnB/?mibextid=vTn5qL.) I don’t use corporal punishment with my kids, because my wife is a white American, and well we’ll see how they turn out. There is a rational argument for corporal punishment of kids. A human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25. You can’t reason with kids. There is a place for physical consequences that kids can understand with their limited cognitive capabilities. The move to ban corporal punishment doesn’t seem to have produced equally effective alternatives. At least from my experience in America, it seems like parents just simply put up with poorly behaved kids. It’s a sort of luxury belief. In a subsistence economy you need kids to behave because mistakes can be fatal. In rich country, you can put up with poorly behaved kids because you just have so much margin.

tptacek 4y ago
According to Gershoff (cited elsewhere on this thread as well), in a study of 20,000 kindergarteners, Asian American families are the cohort least likely to employ corporal punishment. I'm sure your kids will be fine; they have lots going for them.
- rayiner 4y ago
  The Reddit thread on the study you’re referring to aptly summarizes the problems with it: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-american-parents-dont-spank-their-kids/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-a... One, this seems to rely on GSS data, which is conducted only in English and Spanish. Just 44% of for example foreign born Chinese Americans are proficient in English. So the GSS data is going to heavily skew towards assimilated, affluent Asians. Two, the survey question is idiomatic English. It refers to a “good hard spanking.” I don’t think any of my immigrant family would say they do that to their kids, even they do use physical discipline. Non-native English speakers are going to be much less likely to understand what “hard” (or even “spanking”) means in this context. Three, the survey is of Asian Americans, not immigrants. A survey of Latinos showed that the percentage that use corporal punishment drops dramatically in the second generation. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true for Asian Americans also. But by the second generation, Asians enjoy no advantages in outcomes relative to other native born Americans. Apart from that, even Asians who don’t use physical punishment use “socio emotive” discipline that people in this thread would deem emotional abuse: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-american-parents-dont-spank-their-kids/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/10/02/why-asian-a... What’s your standard for “fine?” It’s shocking how hard it is to keep kids from sopping up the worst aspects of American culture. Unfortunately I think there’s a good chance that one of the three will end up childless, unmarried, or divorced. Where I’m from I would have a reasonable expectation that none of those three would happen.

kashunstva 4y ago

> It’s an effective tool. And if effectiveness were the only criterion against which to judge an act, then maybe one would be justified in supporting violence and threats of violence against children. (Although even there, in aggregate, I’m skeptical that corporal punishment is effective.) But in any case, not all effective actions are morally sound.

tptacek 4y ago
And you're right to be skeptical. There's evidence that it's an effective tool for securing short-term compliance, but the consensus, among dozens of studies, is that it's positively correlated with bad long-term outcomes; most famously, aggression and domestic violence, but also mental health problems.

seba_dos1 4y ago

> (that i’m aware of) Stressing this out is enough of a reply.

kaba0 4y ago

That’s quite the rose gold view.

mharig 4y ago

I got beaten once in school by a teacher, and it was well deserved and fixed the problem at hand. But my mother told me once, that when she was in school her teacher was fixated at one girl and did beat her often and mostly for no good reason. The girl was from a poor family, and my mother was upset by the unjustice, but never spoke up, IIRC. So YMMV. At the end, I think such occasional injustice is the lesser evil compared to the sheepish society and nanny states that are the consequence of the pathetic antiviolent decadence we have nowadays in most of the nation states.

thiht 4y ago
> pathetic antiviolent decadence Care to elaborate?
- mharig 4y ago
  Is this really necessary? The antiviolence should be clear reading the most comments to the original post. Denying the violent part of the nature of the monkey horde Homo sapiens is pathetic. And that in all industrialised nations - if not in all else as well-, throw-away society and obscene consumerism are the dominant hype should be obvious.

thiht 4y ago

> a Catholic Nun who broke a ruler over my hands as they were laying flat on the desk What the fuck kind of shitty human being is this? Can you even imagine doing that? Putting someone’s hands flat on a desk and hitting as hard as you can with a ruler? That’s some next level twisted psychopathic shit here. > I actually have a fond memory of it now There’s your psychological damage. That’s not a normal reaction, even years after. > It was deserved and fixed the problem at hand and by example to the other students 2 questions for you: - did it fix anything? Did you learn a lesson or were you just scared of getting caught? I guarantee the only lesson other students learned was « don’t get caught » - assuming it fixed the issue somehow, was physical abuse the only way to do that?

skedaddle 4y ago

It's highly variable. I didn't go to a Catholic school but where I grew up there were religious camps parents could send their kids to, where they could be hit. Some of those kids had problems with drugs or aggression, but others were just queer in one sense or another. If the Catholics can hit then so can the Pentecostal and Baptist and Mormon teachers as well, and you might not have appreciated their discipline as much.