DC-match2 (Quickstrike/LGM vs Scid/Barcik)

[Andail]

The subject is:
Corporal punishment is an important part of the raising of a child.

Qucikstrike and LGM are pro
Scid and Barcik get the first post

Go!

[Barcik]

  When a child grows, he is like raw material in the hands of the educator. And more importantly, he lacks a sense of judgement.

 A child who gets beaten by a parent for doing a bad thing, cannot understand how it is good for him in the long run. He lacks the ability. All he sees at the moment, all he feels, all he thinks about is the beating, not at all how it will make him a better person in the future. It is very hard to find a child who will agree that a punishment to him is just. This sense of unfairness doubles when the punishment is physical.
 In other words, what takes effect and stays in the child's minds are the emotions at the moment of the punishment. These emotions usually circle around fear, shame (not for the crime, but for suffering the punishment), pain and hate. Human instincts cannot stand being beaten without any ability of countering it. Any such beating, even the wickest one leaves a physocoligical strain which will stay. The child will forever remember the emotions stated above.
 One more thing I would like to refer to is the hate I stated above. When a child gets beaten, he feels hate for the one who beats him. But that is not particulary serious, as it usually passes after a few days (unless he is beaten constantly). The real problem is that the child thinks the beating parent hates him. A child in today's Western society quickly learns how beating a child is wrong. When a partent hurts him, he thinks that he isn't loved by this partent anymore. And one of the most important things in the crafting of a child's personality, is to make him feel loved. Otherwise, this is one of the worst moral blows which stays forever.  

[Scid]

First, I would like to congratulate Barcik on bringing up some excellent points. I'm sure it won't be easy for the opposition to disprove them.

As Barcik has said in the post above, corporal punishment doesn't teach children anything. It only makes them afraid to be hurt by the people it wants to be loved by the most. This has some very bad consequences.

a) If the parents don't really love the child, the child will stop caring about their opinions, and will in fact start making those very mistakes it was taught not to make in order to hurt it's parents back. Think puberty. Or for some more dangerous examples, think serial killers.

b) Corporal punishment takes away somebodies freedom to decide, for themself, that they don't want to do make the wrong choices. This freedom is fundamental! Everybody should be able to decide, for theirselves what choices they make, based on what the consequences of them will be.

Now, because children who have been punished can never see (and feel) anything BUT the trauma they received when they were punished, they become blind to those consequences. They turn into little versions of pavlov's dogs. And all of this misery and torture happens because the parents were raised in this way too, and have also been turned blind to the consequences of corporal punishment. All of this because it's human nature to be lazy and take shortcuts. Why teach a child the consequences of it's actions when you can, instead of taking time out of your busy schedule to explain exactly what it should know, just kick it around the block a few times and get the same results?

Many people don't see the damage they cause to children this way, and I do believe they should be made aware of what they are doing.

c) You can only love somebody as much as you've been loved yourself. This is an universal truth. Again, look at some of the worst examples the human race has brought forward. They've all been devoid of love. Corporal punishment effectively lessens the amount of love a person reveices from his parents, and can in turn give to others in his life. This will make their lives, and those of their companions, worse.

I do not think we still have to raise our children the same way they used to be raised, back when the human race was unable to communicate. At one time, it may have been a necesary evil - because there simply was no alternative (think cavemen, for example). There is a better alternative nowadays, and whilst it may be hard to raise a child to be completely free and able to see the truth instead of painful memories - it is definately something parents should strive to do. Banning corporal punishment from the education of your children is the necesary first step to do this.

[LGM]

Well now...

Nowadays when you go to a school, you find all sorts of kids and personalities. Some of them good, some of them bad. But I've noticed alot of the same traits in kids in my area. Teenagers these days really don't care about their work. They don't want to put in any effort. It's quite difficult to find a kid that actually is serious about their school work.

What am I getting at, you may ask.. Well, back when corporal punishment was enforced in schools.. You hardly EVER found a child that didn't care about school. Most kids wanted to learn, and pass. Those beatings at school kinda showed the kids that slacking off and causing trouble was bad. It would cause them pain if they didn't do what was right. So by their teenage years, their subconcious would tell them to learn and not slack off..

This didn't happen all the time mind you, there were still kids that didn't pay attention or do their work.. But in majority, there was a lot less trouble with students back then...

And that's all I have to say about that

(Mind you, I'm AGAINST corporal punishment o_0)

[Barcik]

  I don't think the situation is really as you portrait it.
 The enthusiasm these kids have shown for school after the corporal punishment was false. They wanted to avoid the beating, and thus didn't slack off, but deep inside, they still didn't care about school. This way, some children's hatred for school could only have gotten stronger, and not the other way around.
 And yet, taking your point as fully valid. In the new Western world everyone can have his own interests. If a kid decides that school is not for him, it is his choice. Now, mind you, I am not saying it is good, but all I am saying is that it is wrong to make a child do something he doesn't want by using brute force.

[Quickstrike]

Kids these days smoke in schools, do drugs, deface property, steal, and other unspeakable acts of unjustness.  Why do they do this?  They do because they won't get in serious trouble.  Suspension, they say "YAY"!  They'd rather be in their room making a bong.  Detention, good time to write stuff on the desks.  You can see, they don't see the physical side of this.  The human body accociates pain with the experiance.  If they had a physical punishment, they'd eventually stop.

[Scid]

What I think you mean to say is that children no longer respect adults like they did 40 years ago. And that's true. But let me ask you this: what good is respect if there is no basis on which it is earned.

Children should respect their parents - not because they'll beat them up if they don't - but because those parents have sacrificed many things in order to raise them. And they should respect their teachers because they put in a lot of effort and time to teach them new skills.

But this is the bottom line: Respect should always be earned. Never be forced by violence. And never be taken for granted.

Another thing. When you say that the reason why children do bad things is because they no longer get in serious trouble when they do, you pretty much say that every human being is evil. I refuse to believe this.

We have all been children, and since - as by what you said - children not being punished when they do bad things is the only reason for them to do it, that makes us all spineless dangerous psychopaths. I think you're forgetting that everybody, even a baby, has the choice to do, or not do, something bad. And I think it's a parents task to teach them to make the right choice, rather than beat them up every time they make a wrong one.

Now I'm not so naive as to say that a child should not, sometimes, be punished for doing something wrong. Sometimes words and logic fail on children. But in this case, once all the other options have been tried, I beg you to remember that there is also such a thing as a punishment where a child is shown the consequences of it's actions. There are other methods to teach with besides the cane.

[LGM]

You may not be winning respect the right way, but what other way is there. There is no mind-control device to make children act decent.

This is the only method we have now without going so far as to drug them... Well, we have Ritalin.. But that doesn't work on everybody. It was a good method when they used it, and if they would've kept it.. Society as we know it could have taken a totally different turn... For the better or for the worse.

[Barcik]

  I would not say that the only way to teach a child is physical. There are many many other ways to do so.
 But putting that aside, a beating is not going to earn an adult respect. It is only going to teach the child fear, no respect. On the contrary, a child who is exposed to romantic ideas of human rights from a young age will only disrespect the one who punishes him in such a "cheap" and wrong way.

[Scid]

Back when corporal punishment was the only way to raise children:

- children would often get hurt, by their parents, for wrong reasons, resulting in traumatic experiences.
- children would fight each other more often on the playgrounds because they associated power with violence.
- children were often punished for having a different opinion than their parents had. The parents often 'beat it out of them'. These children later became docile workers who would get exploited by rich patrons in factories their entire lives.

The right way to teach anything, is by giving the right example. Parents who beat their children, even if it is for a good reason and in the interest of the child, and yet persistantly tell the child never to hurt others, are hypocrites. Children are not stupid. They will pick up on this sooner or later, and it will usually results in a bad relationship between the child and the parents later on.

If children don't respect their teacher, it's often because he's a bad teacher, who doesn't respect the opinions of his pupils. It has nothing to do with corporal punishment.