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Re: [Phys-L] Does anyone doubt that someone is Politicallybaiting...



At 00:05 -0500 2/7/12, John Clement wrote:
There is no need for corporal punishment in schools. I think you will find
that the states that allow it tend to be lower in educational
accomplishment.


So you are saying that teachers are still officially allowed to hit children in some states as a deliberate act of punishment? And that is sanctioned as part of educative process? As a school teacher I would have been suspended, and probably sacked and unlikely to get another job, if I had hit my students.

The rule I worked with is that force was only allowed in self defense, to protect others, and to protect property - i.e. you could restrain a child who was attacking another child or damaging things, but you certainly could not hit them later for it!

I think that was perfectly correct - corporal punishment seems fine if it is part of an education into a society where using violence to impose one's will is deemed acceptable, and that is the example schools are intending to make. I wonder if there a correlation between allowing corporal punishment in school and states that feel it is acceptable to kill criminals as judicial punishment? Perhaps, more tellingly, whether there is a correlation between use of corporal punishment in schools and violent crime in the communities?

However, later teachers found that the rules become even stricter so that any physical contact could get teachers in trouble. One of the schools where I did my teaching placement (as a graduate trainee) had children that were so noisy and active that often they would not even notice you talking to them, and sometimes it made sense to gently tap or put a hand on a shoulder to get the student's attention. Later that kind of act (although I'm sure it still went on in many classrooms) could get a teacher into trouble if the child/parent wanted to make a fuss. I thought that was probably a step too far, although I recognise that a tap can be construed differently by tapper and tapped.

Best wishes

Keith

--

Dr. Keith S. Taber

Editor: Chemistry Education Research and Practice
(Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry)
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Book Reviews Editor: Studies in Science Education
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