The article Absurd Springtown Episode... is one in which the topic of corporal punishment in a particular incident, in a particular Texas school, is disclosed.
This article reaches out to a wide range of persons involved with the life and up-bringing of a child. It was published online, September 25th, this year.
As this is an editorial, and by definition does not require an individual's name attached to it, I emailed four of the editors at the Star-Telegram inquiring as to the ownership of the article and received two replies stating this particular piece had buy-in from all staffers. So in essence, this article is written by the editorial department of the Star.
Their opinion prods at one of the active (and peculiar) laws to which Texas still adheres: paddling in schools. This article is opinionated in nature, and offers only one "obvious" solution to the muddled mess that is school-administered corporal punishment.
Succinctly speaking: a mother gave her approval allowing the school's administrator to paddle her errant child. The child subsequently gave evidence of the 'offense' by the marks left on her body. The mother was piqued at the witness of it, reported it, and made it famous fodder for media intervention.
According to the article, Texas school laws indicate that the administrators of education at the school will step in for correction's sake (with the approval of the parent, and only once per semester.) Texas government has approved this course and has the backing of many impressive-sounding agencies. The innuendo built in to the article is that this incident, with the government (and her affiliates) ascending and approving the proceedings, only makes a bad situation worse: now there are white collars with red tape stepping in, making everything official-like, and worse still: setting bog-standard precedents.
Adequate in length and tone, Star-Telegram is straight forward in their story's accusation that Springtown's actions are 'wrong-headed and counter-productive' and generally skewed to modern ways and means. I believe the article is meant to leave the reader in a state of incredulity (effectively done IMO--but not for the reasons presented.) I leave the piece convinced that handing over the responsibility of correction to an unbiased, otherwise non-involved school partisan, is not only NOT a good idea, but a particularly bad one.
I'm sure that some fine lawyer having a deft and pretty hand at writing persuasive documents could pen a directive in such a way that states although schools are materially and considerably involved in the upbringing of children (as far as education and sociology are concerned,) letting them correct a child in a physical way is an area in which a 'not appropriate' line has been breached. Correction should be done at home, in a LOVING, attentive, involved, concerned environment--certainly not fobbed off to a person who has neither the right, nor (likely) the proper concern, to administer correction. It's a fine and messy line that Texa(n)s have crossed.
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