Copoal Punishment in American Schools

The issue of corporal punishment in schools is bound up inextricably with wider-scope issues such as civil society, civil order, and questions of discipline. Indeed a significant body of political philosophy informs the whole question of the mechanisms by which civil order, the controlling image of social organization in Western thought, can be maintained. In Leviathan, Hobbes addresses social order in terms of absolute authority. He famously sees humanity as condemned to an existence nasty, brutish, and short, unless organized around "a common power to keep them all in awe" (1958, p. 106). The only tribute to the human species that Hobbes can pay is that it has the intelligence to recognize that it is in need of a strong leader, which functions as a bulwark against humanity's natural condition, war (and therefo

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likely to become juvenile delinquents, to bully other children, or to inflict cruelty on animals (Flynn, 1999), and to experience psychological depression as both children and adults. Straus's term for this linkage is "cultural spillover" (1991, 1994). In 1979, one Western country, Sweden, enacted national legislation to altogether prohibit corporal punishment of children. The law, which was duplicated in Austria and elsewhere in Scandinavia, carries no criminal penalty but appears to have been an exercise in social engineering and parental guidance (Straus & Mathur, 1996). However, the relevance of the Swedish case to the American case has not been accepted. Rosellini (1998) cites figures showing a 400% increase in reports of child abuse in Sweden between 1979 and 1989. The lessons of cultural spillover have not been lost on child-advocacy groups. The National Association for the Education of Young Children, the American Academy Of Pediatrics, and the National PTA have forcefully urged the view that corporal punishment in schools is morally wrong and psychosocially damaging and should be altogether outlawed. The National PTA publishes a list of what it calls pupil-beating states, cautioning parents against enrolling their chil
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Approximate Pages = 28 (250 words per page)