Spare the Paddle

City school-board member Laura Jobe is to be commended for taking on the issue of corporal punishment in the Memphis City Schools. Jobe’s proposal to abolish paddling is well-considered and long overdue.
Proponents of paddling contend that the practice is necessary to maintain discipline. But there is no real evidence, statistical or otherwise, to back up that claim. On the contrary, if paddling were all that were necessary, or even useful, there would surely be classroom chaos in the 37 states that have already banned corporal punishment in their schools, either completely or partially. As things stand now, Tennessee is one of only 13 states that still allow some version of the practice in all districts.
Our children “learn” – from television, from movies, from the dubious authority of their peers – that the easiest way to resolve a conflict is through physical intimidation. If you can’t resolve a problem with words or reason (goes this doctrine) simply resort to force. The adults who run our school systems presumably know better – and should be teaching another lesson: that of civility and respect. Paddling may make the teacher feel better, and may temporarily intimidate the pupil, but it serves no lasting good that any serious student of the issue has ever been able to discover.
There are also possible legal ramifications to be considered. Corporal punishment, like capital punishment, should be fairly and uniformly administered. This is not currently the case. Some school administrations paddle, and some don’t – and some paddle more often than others. What are the percentages of males paddled to females? Blacks to whites? The possibilities for abuse, accidental injury, and capricious or malicious use of the practice put school systems at risk for lawsuits.
Many alternatives to paddling exist and are being put to good use in school districts around the country. Some of these include peer mediation, removal of privileges, extra work details (such as cleaning school grounds), verbal and written reprimands, and mandatory parental involvement.
Though the hard-nosed among us may see paddling as hard medicine, it is, in fact, the easy way out. A clearly futile form of punishment, it hurts us as much as it does our children. n

Two Wrongs Can Make a Right

A couple of our state’s leading politicians (and presidential prospects) frequently come in for characterological criticism. Vice President Al Gore, it is said, is too much a literal-minded policy wonk, while Senator Fred Thompson is alleged to lay back sometimes and to become less than zealous in pursuit of his goals.
All the better, we say. Gore’s blinkers-on pursuit of one of his favorite concerns, the environment, was the largest single factor in the United States’ knuckling down to unprecedented ecological controls at the recent Kyoto summit. And Thompson’s lack of partisan adrenaline in the direction of his Senate fact-finding committee produced a relatively balanced study of fund-raising abuses that, we predict, will compare favorably to the more intensely partisan panel now being headed in the House by Dan Burton of Indiana.
Let us stipulate that we are all flawed beings, and it’s just possible that the flaws, as in these two cases, are the source of our major virtues. n