A Pass on Spankings

Spankings for children: wise thing.

Spankings delivered by a school administrator: foolish thing.

I'm not surprised Texas still allows school-spankings--we are a little slow on the uptake sometimes.  But Texas, her administrators, and those that agree with them are WRONG when it comes to permitting schools to spank kids.  This particular area of education is territory that should be cultivated at home--in a loving, respectful, controlled, and sober environment--where TRUST is a foundation that's been firmly laid.

There are piles of articles and bloggeries linking to muttonheads who have over-done it in the corrections arena.  And although masses of parents know instinctively that spanking is a helpful, constructive process, (* * * *) many have completely backed off of this healthy and beneficial action simply because of those nincompoops.

With the exception of a few states we, as a nation, have not codified any regulations pertaining to this subject, and for good reason: it's not in the rights of the school to intervene for correction's sake on the child's behalf (except, obviously, in extreme cases.)  In states that allow it though, slagging off this responsibility to the educational establishment is the new norm (with some strange, Jerry-Springer-like mutations along for the ride: "...if the administrator marks my child, I might make some scratch out of this.")

To be a paddling administrator in Texas' schools means adherence to a certain cluster of events.  Currently:

• the paddling administrator must be the same gender as the offending student. 
• a male administrator must observe a female administrator spanking a female student
• a male or female administrator will attend a male administrator spanking a male student 

All of this piffle serves only to send the message to kids that authorities and policy-makers can dabble anywhere they want as long as it is well-documented and witnessed--that those who govern are only concerned with appearances: the prettiness of the paperwork is supreme; the development of the student is peripheral...or less.

As the Law of Diminishing Returns dictates, we will likely require additional documentation for future interventions:

• we shall measure and monitor the size of any marks or welts that present subsequent the spanking
• gender-sensitive
• witness present

• we shall photo/film, document, file and database evidence of incident
• photos/filmage taken by gender-same
• witness present

Each of us must have a certain amount of correctional training in order to live peaceably in a 'civilized' world.  And those who've secured a modicum of success at that've had some discipline along the way--be it as a child with spankings and interventions, or as an adult from the more painful School of Hard Knocks.

The purpose of parental corporal punishment is to tease out errant willfulness to benefit the child--all as part of a developing, responsibility-building quality of his address.  Anything else, delivered by anyone else, is a mixed message of confusion and betrayal.