Paddling

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Home : 2001 : June : 26

Paddling
By Mary

Sorry to disagree with you, but I cannot see or justify any situation when paddling is an acceptable solution to a problem. Believe me, there have been a good number of times when I have been heard to mumble about wishing
I could give some rambunctious troublemaker a swat on the backside, but in reality I could not and would not ever do it. We have all had our share of discipine problems but the dictionary defines discipline as, "Training that is expected to produce a specified character or pattern of behavior, especially that which is expected to produce moral or mental improvement." Exactly what kind

of specified pattern of behavior are we hoping to produce by striking a child with a piece of wood? We live in an increasingly violent society. Kids see acts of violence committed on TV, at movies, in video games, on the news, perhaps even within their own nighborhoods or families. Shouldn't our job as educators be to help our students find non-violent ways of solving problems? When we advocate paddling as not only acceptable but also desirable to achieve proper behavioral results, the only thing we are teaching is that if you are bigger, stronger, or more powerful, then violence is okay to get what you want. Do you really want to be part of a system that perpetrates this kind of message? Children learn by example. Is this behavior what we want them to learn?