tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5037190876571380696.post523575187105051019..comments2023-11-25T03:11:51.759-06:00Comments on On Today's Page: Corporal punishment (paddling) in schools: violates equal protectionDenis Drewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11833367196756465896noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5037190876571380696.post-59474265666495565432010-12-03T11:32:26.355-06:002010-12-03T11:32:26.355-06:00Completely I share your opinion. In it something i...Completely I share your opinion. In it something is also idea good, agree with you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5037190876571380696.post-5582246191052068142009-05-04T08:58:00.000-05:002009-05-04T08:58:00.000-05:00ORIGINAL LO-O-ONG VERSION
This essay can be boi...ORIGINAL LO-O-ONG VERSION<br /><br /><br /><br />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...<br />...because the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment says they have to.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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…<br /><br />…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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Denis Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11833367196756465896noreply@blogger.com