More than 500 students, parents and other supporters of a Catholic school in New Orleans marched on the offices of Archbishop Gregory Aymond to oppose his call for an end to the school’s policy of using corporal punishment:
The protesters called on the archbishop to issue a “public, unequivocal retraction … of all statements linking St. Augustine disciplinary policies with violence, particularly in the New Orleans community.”
Protesters also demanded proof of Aymond’s claims that parents have complained about the paddling policy, along with evidence for a study he has cited to bolster his position.
The archbishop has said corporal punishment institutionalizes violence, runs counter to Catholic teaching and good educational practice, and violates local archdiocesan school policy.
Corporal punishment runs counter to Catholic teaching? I did not know that. I suspect that news would also come as a surprise to Father Dolan and Stephen Dedalus.
March 30th, 2011 | 11:03 am
Too bad the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers didn’t know it back in the sixties. Or maybe it’s a post Vatican II thing.
March 30th, 2011 | 11:16 am
Corporal punishment is amazingly ineffective. As a parent who has been tempted two or three times to use it, it is too entwined with anger to look very different from bullying: I can control you because I’m bigger and more powerful.
I have nieces who grew up with spanking. My wife and I spent some time with them several years ago. One of them misbehaved and my wife said, “Time out.” In a stage whisper, she asked our daughter what that meant. “You sit by yourself away from everybody else for a few minutes,” came the reply. We had tears, then correct behavior the rest of the day.
It’s likely that in the Charter-Rigali era, the Church has no footing to implement corporal punishment in schools. Even if I practiced corporal punishment at home, I would not trust any outside agency, even (or especially) the Church, to implement it to my satisfaction.
March 30th, 2011 | 12:51 pm
The problem here is that His Excellency, who, in my opinion, has been remarkably effective, tied in corporal punishment with the epidemic of violence in New Orleans. Archbishop Aymond was probably inartful in his choice of words, which led many at St. Augustine to conclude that the Archbishop was intimating that paddling St. Augustine students was causing violence.
As a result, this has largely become an issue of race. This is evident from the following passage which appeared in a Times-Picayune article: “The Rev. John Raphael, the president of St. Augustine, has said the issue is not as much about the wooden paddle as about the rights of African-American parents to educate and discipline their children in their own traditions.”
Of course, this raises the question of whether St. Augustine is an African-American school or a Catholic school. Rev. Raphael seems to be suggesting that what African-Americans deem to be appropriate outweighs what the Archbishop deems to be appropriate, even in a school directly under the control of the Archbishop.
My own guess is that paddling at St. Augustine would have gone the way of the do-do quickly and quietly if only the Archbishop had been more saavy in his approach. Once paddling got lumped in with the larger problems of crime in the African-American community, however, the battle was lost.
While I actually find nothing wrong with paddling, I imagine that had the Archbishop approached the issue from a different angle he would have found supporters within the African-American community. In sum, this issue is entirely political, and has little to do with the pros and cons of corporal punishment.
March 30th, 2011 | 10:22 pm
Corporal punishment is amazingly ineffective. As a parent who has been tempted two or three times to use it, it is too entwined with anger to look very different from bullying: I can control you because I’m bigger and more powerful.
Depends on how you define “effective”.
I didn’t spank my kids. I regret it. I was a liberal back then. Ultimately I had to ditch the liberal policies because I just didn’t have enough money to keep the kids bribed enough to keep them well-behaved, and I couldn’t threaten to take away the trip to Europe because I couldn’t afford a trip to Europe anyway.
In true liberal fashion, I didn’t start them with “first you obey then when you get older you’ll learn to understand why”. I did it backwards: “first you’ll understand how things work, then you’ll understand enough to obey”.
But sometimes there is no “answer”, and reasoning will never lead to the child “voluntarily” choosing to behave.
It took a healthy dose of real world to smack them down.
Some people – wealthier people – manage to have kids who don’t get smacked down by reality until middle age.
We now have a world where nobody has to obey any rule or observe any duty unless they personally see the wisdom and agree that it’s a good idea. This is not healthy – not for society, and not for the children who think reality is something you get to vote on.
I believe that corporal punishment should be used with extreme care, if at all. But I was raised in a school where they used a big stick, and I never had it used on me, because I was well behaved. From my point of view (as the student I once was), that it was used on the bullies was not a bad thing: the fear of that stick was what kept the bullies from being too cruel.
March 31st, 2011 | 11:01 am
“Depends on how you define “effective”.”
I mean raising good kids.
I wouldn’t touch some of your lazy (I hesitate to call them liberal) parenting methods. I prefer direct accountability, and I’m not afraid to have a child cry or get upset over discipline.
My daughter once tried to give her kitten a “haircut” but ended up trimming off a piece of ear. When my wife went to the vet, daughter was in tow. Spanking would probably have been easier, but it was important to have our daughter be part of the ordeal: explain to the vet what happened, listen to the doc’s instructions, hold the cat during the examination, and the like.
Blake, you seem to assume that corporal punishment is the only option available when somebody does something wrong. To be consistent, you’d have to advocate for it in the workplace, no?
March 31st, 2011 | 1:16 pm
“Depends on how you define “effective”.”
I mean raising good kids.
I wouldn’t touch some of your lazy (I hesitate to call them liberal) parenting methods. I prefer direct accountability, and I’m not afraid to have a child cry or get upset over discipline.
Oh, I wasn’t “lazy” enough to use bribes and threats.
I just noticed all the “liberals” around me did.
Then, when their kids grew up to be troubled brats, it was off to the counselors, to make “parenting agreements”.
(In case you don’t know what that is – yet – a “parenting agreement” is yet another way to bribe your kid into behaving. You make a deal with him: he will behave reasonably well, and in return you will give him something. The counselor will mediate as the two of you negotiate exactly what you have to give him, in exchange for him not doing crazy, antisocial things. You write it up as a contract, sign it, and pay the counselor who came up with this “bright idea”.)
If that doesn’t work, the next step is a “camp”. There is a thriving industry out there teaching parents of spoiled children how to regain control. (Yes, control).
I didn’t say corporal punishment is the only way to do things. I said that it should be used with extreme care, if at all.
But the real issue is that control – having the power to command your child vs. “reasoning”.
“Reasoning” – expecting the child to understand and agree with your moral reasoning on things – simply does not work. That is my point.
The child’s eyes well up with great big crocodile tears, and the parent thinks “oh look how repentant that child is!”, and feels all great that their child is such an empathetic, responsive, sensitive child, when really what’s happening is the parent is teaching their child how to be manipulative.
Affluent schools are filled with these children – all of whom know exactly how to ‘play’ the grownups.
And every parent there thinks their little dear is the one that is genuinely “nice” – as the kids fall into packs that literally bully the less popular kids to death. (And we all laugh at teen comedies about schools where the power-clique kids are running the school, ha ha that’s so funny, and never does it occur to us to ask why virtually every teen film made since “Carrie” has featured the same concerns about power-cliques and bullying and kids who are unrestrained and out of control.)
Kids simply do not develop the cognitive abilities necessary for mature moral reasoning until they are older, but they are able – and have incentive – to manipulate their parents starting from the moment they’re old enough to figure out there’s an advantage in it.
March 31st, 2011 | 4:11 pm
While it is true that children develop moral reasoning as they grow, not every situation of discipline is one of immoral behavior. And not all adults have mastered it themselves. I suspect moral failure is part of the human condition, not a marker of emotional immaturity.
Children do possess cognitive abilities in many arenas: when something is hot, you get burned when you touch; when something is dangerous, you get scared when you participate. Kids understand the connections made when a bully is isolated from others, when you break something, you replace it, and when you hurt someone’s feelings, you apologize.
I’m afraid I just don’t recognize the caricatures you’ve offered. Being involved with Catholic schools for the better part of two decades, I see more problems with parenting than with being a good kid. It has little or nothing to do with ideology, and a lot more to do with narcissism.
Yes, I did see your disclaimer on the preferred rarity of corporal punishment. I wrote that corporal punishment was “amazingly ineffective.” It would seem we’re in the neighborhood of 90-99 percent agreement on it. So, are you arguing because you’re not a liberal any more and arguing is what conservatives do? Or do you really have a difference with me?
Too many parents do a crummy job of raising kids. Do we permit school teachers and administrators, some of whom have their own issues to deal with, take over the task? That seems a rather enabling approach to me.
March 31st, 2011 | 7:02 pm
The purpose of corporal punishment (can it be spelled “corporeal?” why or why not?) is much broader than immediate behavior modification. That’s just the most visible facet. Corporal punishment is about making it clear that willful transgression results in physical pain. This is a necessary understanding.
People who do not learn this lesson as children have repeated chances to learn it as adults, and the way those lessons are formatted always makes spanking (or even caning) look humane by comparison.
March 31st, 2011 | 7:36 pm
Legal institutional violence toward schoolchildren in the U.S:
Schoolchildrens’ “spanking” related injuries (WARNING – These images may be deeply disturbing to some viewers. Do not open this page if children are present).
http://www.nospank.net/injuredkids.pdf
A Violent Education
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/08/19/violent-education
State Actors Beating Children:
A Call For Judicial Relief
http://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/42-4_Sacks.pdf
Rape: Lesson No. 1
http://nospank.net/s-rape.htm
Read the facts about the “corporal punishment” of children/adolescents/teenagers in US Schools.
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