Corporal Punishment

By growing up in Mississippi, I was always use to corporalpunishment. Since the first day of class, I remembereveryone being afraid of getting a paddling. Hence, therewas order in school. To this day, I continue to supportcorporal punishment. I have come to realize that corporalpunishment does not work in all situations. At times,corporal punishment does work, and it does get the job done. At other times, though, there are more appropriate means ofpunishment. For some students, it is no big deal to get apaddling. In fact, some students prefer to get a paddlingrather than be suspended for a day, go to in-schoolsuspension, or do community service. On the flip side,though, there are those students who never want a paddling. They would much rather sit in in-school suspension or pickup trash outside. I taught this student one time who triedto get community service. He enjoyed going out of schooland picking up trash. I guess it gave him a sense offreedom. So, he would try to do minor things at school toget put in community service. Everyone eventually caught onto what he was doing. He wanted to get written up so hecould pick up trash. He did not, however, want a paddling. So, in his case, corporal punishment did work for him. Onthe flip side, sometimes, corporal punishment is a way forstudents to get out of doing punishment. For example, I hada student one time who was given community service at lunchtime. Hence, he had to clean up the cafeteria aftereveryone had eaten. He hated that. There was no way he wasgoing to do that. So, instead, he decided that he wouldrather take a paddling than have to perform this lunchcommunity service. So, here corporal punishment would notwork. This is what he wanted. In short, yes, I do supportcorporal punishment. Is it always appropriate? The answeris simply no. Corporal punishment works for somesituations, for others not. In addition, corporalpunishment works for some students but not others.