The New York Times
has a report this morning about a graduate student of education enamored of spanking students:
SYRACUSE, March 8 - As a substitute teacher in the public schools here, Scott McConnell says students are often annoyed that he does not let them goof off in class. Yet he was not prepared for the sixth grader who walked up to his desk in November, handed in an assignment, and then swore at him.
The profanity transported him back to his own days at Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma in the 1980's, when there was a swift solution for wiseacres: the paddle.
"It was a footlong piece of wood, and hung on every classroom wall like a symbol, a strong Christian symbol," said Mr. McConnell, who is 26. "Nobody wanted that paddle to come down."
He said he had been a disruptive student, and routinely mouthed off until his fourth-grade teacher finally gave him three whacks to the backside. Physically, it did not hurt. But he felt humiliated and humbled.
"I never wanted that again," Mr. McConnell recalled. "It was good for me."
Humiliation is what fourth-graders need? A paddle is a "strong Christian symbol"...of the salubrious powers of humiliation?
Like many other mental health professionals, Alice Miller agrees that corporal punishment is about humiliation. However, where she and many other child development experts disagree with Mr. McConnell is about the healthful consequences of humiliating children. Humiliation is possibly the worst form of punishment we typically dole out to children, and it is counterproductive. Putting aside the fact that punishment is a relatively ineffective method for teaching or influencing long-term behavior in general, there is the question of the particular side effect risks that hitting brings.
Relationships in a family tend to be characterized by the principle of equal exchange. If you do something hurtful or aversive to me, I will probably do something hurtful or aversive to you, and may even crank it up a little bit for good measure. You, of course, will do the same, and before we know it, we may very well be caught in a spiral of increasingly hurtful behavior. While children may not be able to hit back, they do have the ability to retaliate in more subtle ways, and often behavior problems result.
There is also the side effect that comes from modeling. Corporal punishment tends to demonstrate to a child that it's the physically larger and more powerful person who makes the rules. That's all well and good, you might think, because that's how life is, but what about situations when your child happens to be that larger person? Children who are physically aggressive in school are typically those who have learned this control strategy at home. Bewildering to be told that while others can use it on them, they can't make use of it themselves. Here's a good summary of the potential negative effects of using corporal punishment. These side effects can be long-lasting and serious.
Most academic psychologists and schools of education discourage the use of corporal punishment at home and in the schools for these and other reasons. There are alternatives that don't bring the risks of corporal punishment.
Which brings us back to McConnell:
Supporting corporal punishment is one thing; advocating it is another, as Mr. McConnell recently learned. Studying for a graduate teaching degree at Le Moyne College, he wrote in a paper last fall that "corporal punishment has a place in the classroom." His teacher gave the paper an A-minus and wrote, "Interesting ideas - I've shared these with Dr. Leogrande," referring to Cathy Leogrande, who oversaw the college's graduate program.
Unknown to Mr. McConnell, his view of discipline became a subject of discussion among Le Moyne officials. Five days before the spring semester began in January, Mr. McConnell learned that he had been dismissed from Le Moyne, a Jesuit college.
"I have grave concerns regarding the mismatch between your personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals," Dr. Leogrande wrote in a letter, according to a copy provided by Mr. McConnell. "Your registration for spring 2005 courses has been withdrawn."
Dr. Leogrande offered to meet with Mr. McConnell, and concluded, "Best wishes in your future endeavors."
If the letter stunned Mr. McConnell, the "best wishes" part turned him into a campaigner. A mild-mannered former private in the Army, Mr. McConnell has taken up a free-speech banner with a tireless intensity, casting himself as a transplant from a conservative state abused by political correctness in more liberal New York. He also said that because he is an evangelical Christian, his views about sparing the rod and spoiling the child flowed partly from the Bible, and that Le Moyne was "spitting on that."
Okay, so let me understand here. Getting kicked out wasn't the problem, the "best wishes" comment was? The only part of the letter we've seen that could possibly be construed as humiliating? That's what made him enraged, that's what drives him, as the story later describes, to tirelessly fight against the autocratic and punishing decision of Leogrande? To work himself up into an idealogical fury, developing a theory about how he's being punished because he loves God?
Humiliation was good for the guy when he was a powerless student child; it's bad for him now that he's a powerless student Christian adult. Go figure.