Most people in our country are members of one or other of the Christian Churches and use the Bible as a guideline in their daily lives but the government choose to ignore the explicit instructions about the use of corporal punishment.
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This magnificent teaching aid should be brought back but should be regulated by appointing one person of good character and moral standing to each school to do the necessary.
I never had to beat my children, they had a couple slaps on the hand when they were toddlers, and from around 4-5 years of age, the eyebrow and occasional sharp word was enough. Neither of them are giving me any trouble at age 16 and 19 respectively, and the worst “teenage troubles” I have to contend with is the sulks, which they conveniently do in their bedrooms since I wont give them supper if they get moody around me, and since teenage boys are constantly hungry, it never lasts long.
Corporal punishment is a barbaric, cretinous, mediaeval crime committed against children. It may have been acceptable in Judea 2000 years ago, but it certainly isn’t in the 21st century. Anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to assault children has a serious problem with telling right from wrong.
look. i’m glad as hell my parents were strict. but i could have done without beign beaten blue and black with bloody welts on my 10 year old bottom, or a back-hand accross the face at 7, or kicked at 8 because i didnt want my dad pulling my tooth. i could have done without cold nauseous fear at the pit of my stomach, everytime i heard the sound of my dad’s army belt’s buckle clanging. overall, i would have preferred to love my dad, and not be scared shitless of him.
Well look, I was never spanked until “black and blue and bleeding”, which I would consider abusive. But my parents “spanked” me as a kid numerous times and I have nothing but thanks and love for them. I think it’s degrees and maybe different perspectives, or the maturity of the adult… I dunno. Within boundaries, I’m not against spanking, but I haven’t decided if it’s gonna be “for” my children, because I can’t say I’ve done enough research on the subject to cast a vote here. Some kids just seem beyond “soft” punishment.
I can tell you that I never really feared the “you’ve been bad” paperwork we had to fill-out in high-school. I just shrugged and did the paperwork, big deal.
What I DO remember being “less than pleased” about was getting beaten for trivial shit in school before the “new rules”. Old-timer afrikaans teachers could be harsh, in technical drawing we’d get “A lash for every skew/visible construction line” and similar bullshit. And trust me this afrikaans oomie wasn’t fucking around. Sometimes I think he did it to keep fit. Do I feel emotionally scarred and irrevocably damaged by it? No. “Die manne” thought it was quite funny after the worst pain had subsided. “Bliksem hy’t darem Piet hard gemoer! Hehehehehe, jy ok daar Piet?! jy lyk effe rooi bru…”. Abusive? borderline, but I mean meh, you live.
On the flipside however, I knew kids who had to be taken out of school, or who committed suicide, due to prolonged verbal abuse from fellow classmates. In my (humble) opinion, that did way more damage than physical punishment from authority figures.
Corporal punishment in school, for me, is about adults attempting to control with fear. It does not instill any form of responsibility in a child or respect for another. It is used to keep a child “in his place” and puts up boundaries to the achievement of the end result, which is to learn the particular subject. How many of us absolutely detested a subject simply because of a teacher we couldnt deal with?
I’ve had on or two wonderful teachers back in my day, and they never had to lift a hand against me, and I was a horribly rebellious child who took revenge after beatings by chucking rocks through the principal’s windows. I assaulted a female teacher with the very same sjambok she had the odasity to attempt to beat me with. (got myself a lovely suspension on that one and my Dad had to bribe a generous amount of money to keep me in school).
However, my saving grace for faith in humanity was an English teacher who was specifically employed on a temporary basis (Tannie Mafie refused to have me in her class after the assault) to look after us group of “wayward” kids, she took the 8 or so of us, and she sat down and actually gave us the time of day by listening. All of us achieved distinctions in English, and it was out of respect and love for this woman who cared.
So, in my case, fear simply bought out the worst in me, and if not for the intervention of one teacher who had a far more civil approach to disciplining children, I’d most likely would have had a very different life.
@ Boogie, I was one of those kids that “just seem beyond “soft” punishment”, yet, it was an adult who stopped the downward spiral for me by just giving me the time of day, instead of attempting to force me to shut up and sit down and do as I’m told under threat of violence.
i concurr with fairie on adults just getting kids to shut it, as opposed to actually listening.
fuck knows, my childhood, and adulthood for that matter, would have been epically different, if my parents took the time to get to know me, as opposed to just telling me i’m a rebel/satanist/looking for attention, and sending me off to see the shrink.
kids dont matter. your opinions dont matter. you sit down, and shutup. i lived in a complete fairytale world, immersed in books and believing aliens were trying to contact me. spening my nights lying on the lawn hoping to see a UFO. i do believe i was damn near to developing some serious mental illness. luckily i made a super good friend, whose family rocked, and whose mum actually gave a shit. saved my ass.
and now, since it’s not PC to moer your kids anymore, now parents stick R200 in their hands, and send them off to the mall instead. Try monte casino on a wednesday night. 13 year old girls in skirts shorter than i have ever attempted, in stilleto heals, and epic tits. WTF?
parents of those kids need corporal punishement rather.
Hey, you all need to give yourselves more credit. Rebelliousness is the province of the above-average, and is a symptom of discontentment about being manipulated by others into mediocrity. Without it, neither progress nor self-respect is possible.
And this is exactly the problem. How many children have not attained their full potential because of intimidation/stigmatation/being labeled as “problems”. Instead of being tought how to channel their abilities and questioning natures, many a teenager has opted (in my day), to leave school the moment they turned 16. I myself, would have gone this route if it was not for my mother fighting for me to at least complete my matric.
i have another problem with girls still being boxed into the ‘secretary’ niche. parents dont have dreams for their daughters. just be secretary, get married, then quit your job and have kids.
my boss told me, that i would make a good housewife. i was like, yeah, sure, if my husband is kak rich, and i can spend his money in Milan, and start an animal sanctuary in the back-yard.
he also told me, that he doesnt want his wife to work.
and a lot of parent have no expectations or ambition for their daughters. sons can be engineers, doctors… girls, well, take typing so you can be some asshole’s secretary and deal with his sexual harrassment untill you find a good man and make babies.
Call me biased but all I’m reading in this thread is that it was not necessarily the physical punishment that left scars, but rather the attitude of adults wrt. the child. I can completely understand wanting to be heard and getting lashes instead. But it seems like there’s a deeper problem here.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t mind it in retrospect… My parents didn’t deal with emotional or relationship issues using a belt. Usually it was spared for the “X set fire to something” kind of transgression. I was heard in my house and I was encouraged to question (little did they know…).
It’s not that I’m ‘all for’ beating kids left and right. I just think in the proper context, it’s not always a bad idea. I’ve seen lots of vitriol but very little verifiable facts, perhaps because I have a bit of mistrust of the social sciences in general. Can we trust adults to always know the difference between a chastisement and a beating? Unfortunately no. But for years I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that the corporal punishment debate has been skewed by what is PC and not really about what is fact.
You’re right Boogie, the thread is skewing towards interaction between adults and children instead of staying on the beaten track. No matter though, it will go where it needs to.
However, is it necessary to dish out lashes for homework not done? Hair not short enough or nails too long, or for being cheecky for that matter, my sons would have had hell (pun not intended) in their religious studies classes for pointing out the obvious.
is it necessary to dish out lashes for homework not done? Hair not short enough or nails too long
No. Not according to me, in fact the whole conformity thing in SA schools makes me a bit queasy. Why do you care if my hair is 2mm longer than the arbitrary measure you’ve set? And seriously, LEAVE THE SHORT SKIRTS ALONE! They are not evil, they’re just, appreciated. ;D
ps. Talking as my 16yo self here, in case anyone is calling the cops.
We also live in a country where we have a constitutional right to freedom of religion, which kind-of implies that our government shouldn’t be allowed to make any sort of statements on what the government as a whole believes or doesn’t, at the risk of sounding like they’re discriminating against someone who believes differently. (I would also like to know what this statement is based on? Do we actually know that the majority of South Africans associate with some or other christian church?) Also, I don’t know the bible that well, but I remember that verse about throwing rocks at kids… I don’t recall the verse in the bible that tells people to hit their kids with a strap or a stick?
This magnificent teaching aid should be brought back but should be regulated by appointing one person of good character and moral standing to each school to do the necessary.
http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Letters/Bring-back-the-strap-20111101
Again, has anyone proven that corporal punishment is in fact a 'magnificent teaching aid'? My opinion: it teaches violence and dominance, and by hitting a child all you teach him is that if something irritates him/her when they're all growed up - just beat the crap out of it and it'll go away. What an awesome life lesson. Again - I vomit.
Sheesh Boogie, in my day we had school issued panties, with a zip on the side of the skirt so that they could check that you were wearing the right one and not an satanic-evil one instead. I recall in my Std 6 year, the blasted zip got stuck and I (in all innocence at that age) approached a male teacher to help me fix it, it caused a lot of embarrasment all around and I got shouted at for asking help, confused the shit out of me. They eventually swopped the skirts for dresses because we used to roll them up at the waist to make them shorter (or longer if the situation demanded).
They even monitored the way we folded our socks down, folded down once only was the requirement, and simply because it was stated in the school rule book, we took extra measures to see how many times we could fold it down in order to show our ankles…
oh ye gods. school rules. i had forgotten about them.
when i was in school, the black kiddies were ‘allowed’ in white schools. they weren’t allowed to braid their hair or wear weaves or extentions, which i thought was complete bullshit.
schools need to calm their tits.
This thread has been playing on my mind, so I might as well get these thoughts out.
I was sent to a strict Catholic boys’ boarding school. The boarders lived in large dormitories with up to 50 of us per dorm. There were rows of beds and steel cabinets with no possibility of privacy. As boarders we were allowed out one weekend per term, parents could visit twice per term on specified days; our entire lives were bound up in rules and the clock! Failure to follow the rules usually resulted in either being caned or beaten with the strap. There were rules for these beatings and six was the maximum number given. Being a boarder meant that not only were we subjected to the academic and school discipline but also that of the boarding department. I believe my record was around 20 cuts (cane) in a week. My backend looked and felt like a sheet of corrugated steel! Most of the lay teachers were more inclined to add extra work than to resort to the cane or strap and we hated it.
I would always take a beating rather than the hassle of writing an extra essay or maths sheet. This was the general trend especially amongst the boarders. I do not believe that I ever saw one of the brothers deliver a beating in anger. I know I pushed the one Spanish brother into hitting me with his fist by describing Catholicism and soccer as the major scourges of the underdeveloped nations but that was an exception. I left school after completing matric in 1964 and did not believe that I had been subjected to anything out of the ordinary.
When my children, who came late in my life, were at school (private church) there was no corporal punishment and I do not think I would have allowed it in spite of my experiences. What did blow my mind were the numbers of kids on drugs for ADD?. The teachers in the one primary school would call parents in and tell them to take their kids to see the local specialist so the Ritalin could be prescribed. In some classes more than 50% of the kids were being treated! This I questioned as being a greater abuse than corporal punishment (different thread!).
I would not back this form of punishment today but I do not believe that it was a negative in my development.
