Saturday, April 18, 2009

Corporal punishment (paddling) in schools: violates equal protection


http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?



Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.
******
******
MORE PROGRESS ON THE ISSUE:

Even closer to the final “anti” argument against corporal punishment in school – the big jump (not yet the final) comes at the very end.

First, I can now delineate between the slipper (more like a size 12 sneaker), the cane and the paddle.

Getting the slipper turns out to be a painful spanking (never sounded like much to me). It starts out stinging badly and by the time you get hit on the same spot for the sixth time it is unbearable.

But English students who got the slipper were so happy not to be getting the cane. IOW, the slipper meant a spanking, the cane meant real torture.

OTH, an African slave in America would never be lucky enough to get the cane. Even a small woman can give you max pain with a cane – it is light enough. It takes a strong man (or, for example, a female phys ed coach) to deliver all a paddle can deliver.

I once found a paddle lying around a place I worked and since nobody was around I gave myself a weak, clumsy, back-handed shot on the butt with it – I thought I would hardly feel it, the shot was so weak. It took the hair off my head for ten years (so don’t let women loose with a paddle – everything is a matter of degree).

I once got the equivalent of the cane, thirteen shots with a 36 inch pointer in the seventh grade (he lined up half the class – we had been falling behind doing assignments) and can remember every shot like 1956 was yesterday.

I would probably brave the slipper rather than spend all day in school (even I who “suffered” through every second of school). I would do a dozen Saturdays before braving the cane or the paddle.

To me this means that the usual “anti” arguments about permanent trauma are more appropriate to spanking – the slipper. When you are dealing with true torture (the slave paddle) the only “anti” argument you need is the torture itself.

Now we are ready for the big “anti” finale: I find the adult paddler to be the one who is behaving immaturely – the definition of immature being not keeping things in the right proportion – in the case of the adult paddler just to give in to his or her bureaucratic impulses.

We covered the light weight of the student infractions elsewhere (we don’t tell students that) – student rules equate to adult office management. We now know how unacceptably (criminally!) painful being paddled or caned is. The adult paddler ignores – really inverts – the true proportion of both: the personification of immaturity.

[*Further "physics" insights: the reason students victims may be told to spread their feet wide for a paddling is prevent them from instinctively puckering their butt cheeks together to absorb the power of the incoming missile (making the pain penetrate deeper). Nothing like that happens with a cane which doesn't have anything resembling the impact force of paddle.

[Students relate living if fear of the paddle or the cane through their school years. Nobody reports living in terror the whole time of every getting the slipper -- which is very painful punishment but not full-fledged torture.

[A caning is a trip through hell. Every single shot with a paddle is a trip through hell -- making a paddle totally inappropriate for "spanking" children; should be outlawed even for parents.]


Another possible approach is that you cannot hit a school child if they have not done anything morally offensive: e.g., spitting on passersby from the school bus, cheating on exams, etc.

We cannot legally strike adults with a stick for lateness (no "option" to getting fired allowed) under criminal law. Children are no different from adults under the constitution -- equal protection (parental exemption for practical keep-state-out-of-family rationale -- not a "sacrament" to be conferred on schools which usually are government). Tardies, doing homework, smoking in the parking lot are all everyday office management issues -- not moral issues.

And if you do hit a school child it is not with the slave-paddler ("er" is more active) or the cane (ownership of which should be outlawed -- perhaps even from parents -- like they were switch-blade knives). The "slipper" or gym shoe (the lower level of old time British corporal punishment) should be the limit -- and it had better be a standard approved by whatever body with what we are talking about in mind; can't let the "hold drillers" lose or they will come up with a near fatal shoe sole. Not unknown in this country -- saw it in a National Geographic story of all places, 25-35 years ago.

[More creepy comparisons (cannot help it; I am gifted with this flood of mechanical associations): I am sure most would agree that the strap or the hairbrush are a lot worse than the sneaker (I saw four Brit soldiers in an online video (this research takes you where it takes you) drawing straws to see who would take a sneaker shot from the other three -- the loser jumped around with the shots but I don't think they would play that way with the strap or the hairbrush.

[And think about it: the paddle is like 5 or 10 hairbrushes. And if you look at the one used in the famous Principal's Office episode it looked like 10 times the area and 20 times the weight -- swung by a beefy ex-welder of course (who seemed to be humanely intended in general -- may have no idea what he delivers).

[To combine with the last (unbracketed) point above: you don't give someone -- least of all a child -- that kind of pain if they have not done something morally offensive (e.g., cheating on a test). You don't train human children to be a little more efficient (reduce tardies) by using what amounts to a cattle prod. Some don't object to a parent hairbrushing a kid for being out late? The parent is not talking about 5 minutes late for dinner -- the parent is worried about being out all night and getting in a car crash with a drunken driver.]

2 comments:

Denis Drew said...

ORIGINAL LO-O-ONG VERSION



This essay can be boiled down to a single sentence (this one): schools have to stop making what would be routine office infractions in the big adult world into a casus belli with children -- and – need to cease utilizing what would be unthinkable violence at the adult office level as routine discipline...
...because the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment says they have to.

The paddle invented to intimidate African slaves and return them to work without delay is in still use for routine student discipline in 20 states today – the same physics still delivers; the same biology still receives. Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures may feel free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions they should, first, be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, must attest to the absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver led a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and not other punishment could not restrain him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused to the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks with the state of rush hour commuting there.

If some employers to take tardiness, for one example, to be a great big deal (you can be fired -- a draconian punishment pro-paddlers will point out), the great commonweal does not consider the employer's big worry its big worry: no compelling interest example (employers have been known to overreact too).

Can deans of discipline “articulate” (the operative legal jargon when constitutional rights are at stake) how even repeated “little kid” inefficiencies add up to a giant community concern? Without such articulation, I hold that schools must not be legislatively exempted from obeying normal criminal statues.

Neither more perfect decorum nor higher test scores should qualify as compelling state interests (justifying violent defense!) – we don’t physically beat school teachers who do not perform up to snuff (they have a union): equal protection!

The explanation most often made for exempting schools from normal assault prohibitions – in carrying out what amounts to everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a deep natural verity and more a handy legal device for insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason).

Further: children who are merely out of control of parents irrationally tend to think nobody cares about them, leading to not caring about themselves (I call this “hysterical alienation” – for more on this and its quick cure click here: http://theorytreatment4juveniledelinquency.blogspot.com/2008/11/theory-and-quick-treatment-for-juvenile.html), become easy prey for every street temptation: we are talking robbery and burglary here, not talking back. Ergo, another powerful motive to keep the state out of home discipline…

…which compelling interests, both, have absolutely zero application to school administration and no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions (against repeatedly striking a minor child with an instrument intentionally made to produce maximum pain with minimum injury). Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience – it does not confer any “sacred (parental) exemption” from criminal law.

I am convinced that whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – somehow less sensibly – permits us to magnify their transgressions in our sight, especially their repeated transgressions (!) and – least sensibly of all – permits us to minimize the darkness of a student’s darkest day (being slave-paddled).

However natural and necessary it is for adults to rule the campus roost, adults are also bound to take note of students’ full human equality (ultimately, teachers exist to serve students) – and to respect their full legal equality under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (passed to protect freed slaves from second-class citizenship – quickly bypassed by the USSC in Plessy v. Ferguson).

Legislatures should not override constitutional equal protection in deference to our genetic code of minor child deference – which most often starts out with the purest of natural intentions – and too often ends up in the bureaucratic environment of a schools as discipline for the sake of discipline: the war on the student!

PS. It is time “non-exempting” states saw fit to prosecute blatantly criminal cases of unlawful punishment – like this instance reported with actual video on Chicago’s WBBM-TV: http://www.truveo.com/Student-Athletes-Report-Corporal-Punishment/id/1955394739.

PPS. The second part of the WBBM-TV report demonstrates that whipping a child for missing free throws can be prosecuted even in “exempting states.” Ditto, if true, prosecution of extra strokes of the strap on the hands of school girls too terrified to hold their hands out for the whole 10 lashes (starting all over from 1!) – as alleged about this Memphis charter school: http://nospank.net/hsh-tn.htm. Even parents may not legally strike a child more times for not being to take all the strikes. The place to end K-12 student inequality is every place we can; the time is today.

Anonymous said...

Completely I share your opinion. In it something is also idea good, agree with you.