By Dr. Clay Jones, Science-Based Medicine, Hitting Children in School: Bad or Good?
A quick public service announcement from Science-Based Medicine, or at least from me: hitting children is fundamentally wrong. It’s also not effective when done in an attempt to improve their behavior. Back in 2014, I wrote about the use of corporal punishment to discipline children, mostly focusing on its use by caregivers in the home. Sadly, not much has changed since I wrote this opening paragraph:
One of the most commonly practiced strategies used by parents to alter the long-term behavior of their children is corporal punishment, commonly referred to as spanking. But the use of the term spanking is problematic in that how caregivers interpret it varies widely, and there is frequent overlap with what pediatricians consider to be abuse. Despite a great deal of evidence showing that spanking is ineffective, is a risk factor for greater forms of physical abuse, and can negatively impact the behavioral and cognitive development of children in a variety of ways, it remains a controversial issue in the United States. The American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous other professional organizations have come down firmly against the use of physical punishment by parents, but unlike 34 other developed nations, there are no federal laws banning spanking.
There are still no federal laws banning spanking, either in the home or in schools, which is what today’s post will focus on. Pediatricians, though not all of us, unfortunately, are generally united in their stance that this is a problem. The American Academy of Pediatrics is naturally opposed to the practice of physical violence against children in all forms and recently issued a policy statement to specifically address when it is used as a form of discipline in schools.
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Why is beating children in schools allowed? Great question. In 1977, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to protect children but failed. A 5-4 decision in Ingraham v Wright provided constitutional cover for school-based physical punishment, saying that 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment don’t apply to students. They left it up to the states, many of which are seemingly incapable of thinking about the (born) children in any meaningful capacity.
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The majority of children being hit at school in the United States live in the South, with the majority (nearly 3 out of every 4) living in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. Mississippi and Texas are the worst offenders, with a third of all kids being attacked by teachers or other school administrators living in those two states. It gets worse.
When a school allows faculty to hit students, which students tend to get hit? Another great question, and one that requires a thoughtful and nuance re..black kids. It’s black kids. Children with disabilities have it the worst, however, with national data showing that 16.5% of kids who are hit at school being served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The tragic reality is that the more marginalized a child is, for example, a black child with autism, the more likely they are to be physically attacked at school by someone charged with their education and safety.
You can read the entire article here.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Parents will sometimes say to their kids “People are not for hitting”. when the kids are fighting, but children are people, too.
One good thing about my childhood is I was never spanked at home or school. Spanking in school was still done but I only saw one child spanked with the big decorated paddle behind teacher’s desk. It was third grade at Lincoln and the boy paddled was the puniest, quietest, least offensive little guy in the class. Ronnie was a small, friendless, sad, shy, sickly, little kid with thick glasses. I never knew why he was punished but I remember being offended. To this day I wonder if teacher picked the easiest most passive little kid to victimize in front of us to assert her authority.
My Father’s and his Brothers’ childhoods featured daily corporal punishment. The beatings were ritual and administered whether there was misbehavior or not. The boys were punished for what they MUST have done that Grandfather didn’t catch. My Grandfather was a church elder and very religious and obviously believed goodness could be beaten into his sons. At 15, my Father ran away to Germany to get away from the abuse and never came back till he was an adult. I think the abuse made him the angry alcoholic he and his brothers grew up to be. He often spoke of the daily beatings and I think it’s why I never got a spanking. When word came my Grandfather died, my Father only said “the old sonofabitch is dead”.
I am delighted that my country, Wales has joined Scotland in banning parents from spanking their children. I trained as a teacher in the 1970s when it was permitted, though I recall doing so only very occasionally, We know so much more now about the harmful psychological effects this has on the young. And that it says that it’s always OK for the strong to bully and hurt the weak in order to get their own way.
I was 14…She was a single parent, my dad had died a few years earlier (an abusive father but that’s a whole other story) and in acting out I was truly the son of perdition to her. One March afternoon, close to her birthday, the Police came and told her some of the details that I was doing. She laid into my backside and the only thing I regret is that she didn’t do it sooner harder and more often.
My grandma and mom spanked me as a child. I literally remember at age 8 fighting off my mom as she was spanking me, trying to shield myself and fending off blows. That was the last time anyone tried to spank me. Years later, my mom told me she remembered the incident too, realized that hitting a child is wrong, and instructed my grandma not to hit me either. My half-brother is 12 years younger than me, and I remember when my brother was about 2 and still in diapers that my 6’4″ stepdad spanked my brother, and you could see the red handprint on the baby’s backside despite the heavy diaper. My mom lit into my stepdad in a way I had never seen her do before.
My grandma was big into spanking accompanied by a lengthy conversation about why the infraction was wrong. My uncle said his mom used to hit him either with a dish towel or her hand just about every time he walked through the kitchen. When he asked why, she would say, “You probably did something I didn’t see.” She didn’t do that to my mom or me (I lived with my grandparents from age 3-18). My mom and I learned to be publicly “good” and sneaky AF so we’d avoid spankings – my uncle wasn’t as sneaky. If my uncle did something Grandma thought was REALLY bad, she’d wait for Grandpa to get home to deal with their son. He’d take my uncle into the bedroom, tell him to yell at the appropriate times, and would hit the bed. My grandfather never spanked any of his grandchildren to my knowledge and rarely spanked his children. He and his 5 brothers had been abused by their alcoholic father.
My father-in-law was abused by nuns and priests in Catholic school. He has stories of nuns hitting him with rulers and a priest literally throwing him down stairs as a teen. He eventually got his Master’s degree in social work and never spanked his kids. It’s one of the few good things I can say about this MAGA man.
We didn’t hit our kids either, and sadly, that wasn’t because I came into the relationship with that attitude. My husband had a combination of never being hit as well as a degree in education, so he knew the data regarding harms of hitting children. I am grateful he insisted we guide our kids in other ways.
I was 14…She was a single mom, my dad had died a few years earlier-an abusive man; that’s a whole other story. In acting out, I was truly the son of perdition to her. One day, closer to her birthday, the Police came and told her some of the complaints and details of what I had been doing. Mom laid into my backside and the only thing I regret is that she didn’t do it sooner, harder and more often.
The reason why corporal punishment doesn’t work is the power dynamic: The hitter is almost invariably bigger, or has more of some other kind of power or authority, than the person being hit. That negates any notion of justice: The kid (or other vulnerable person) taking the beating, even if they have actually done something “wrong,” sees only their own vulnerability. If anything, in certain kinds of personalities, being hit only reinforces their sense that “might makes right”–which is how those who were hit become hitters, or worse.
The power dynamic is what makes abuse possible. But why does it distort a person’s personality? My Father was a charming, bright, athletic, physically gifted person with movie star looks. He could have been successful but he sabotaged himself at every turn. It was always a mystery why his self esteem was so low, a fact of which I’m sure he himself was not aware. My study of the subject says being subjected to abuse and disrespect as an impressionable child teaches on a deep subconscious level the negative lesson that the child is not valued, not good, not worthy of respect, with no right to be here. My anger and resentment toward my Father was overwhelming until I realized he treated himself as badly as he treated his family. Alcoholic self abuse, utter fearlessness and contempt for danger evidenced his lack of self esteem. He did not value himself having been raised as having no value.
according to something I once read, native Americans thought that hitting a child would “drive the badness deeper”. Apparently their children were generally well behaved! Anglo culture could learn from them.