Call to end corporal punishment in schools

By TANEKA THOMPSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

tthompson@tribunemedia.net

CORPORAL punishment, unless administered with a psychological component, is useless and should be eliminated from the school system, a local family therapist said.

Barrington Brennen, a minister and nationally certified psychologist in the United States, said that often those persons administering corporal punishment are taking the easy way out by not sitting down and explaining to young people what they have done wrong.

"From a research prospective we know that corporal punishment may have a positive effect on a person but the punishment must also involve a psychological aspect or emotional involvement. I don't believe that corporal punishment is necessary and secondly corporal punishment is never effective in the long term without mental punishment. In the old days, parents sat down with their children and explained the wrong that they did and the children sometimes had to apologise before they were physically punished.

"Thirdly, if you are physically punishing a child at the age of 16 for the same thing that you are doing (for a child) at age 9 you have failed -- that's including the school system. Physical punishment should end by the time the child starts the teen years and (a disciplinarian) should by then have included techniques that are more powerful," Mr Brennen told The Tribune. He added that those who subscribe to the Christian ideology of "spare the rod spoil the child" often don't realise that effective discipline involves more than just spanking a child.

"In the Bible the word obey is used over 1,100 times, over 900 times the Hebrew translation of obey is to hear -- meaning that it implies that obedience involves teaching and instruction.

"It's hearing and transferring what you hear into workable models of life," he said, adding that whenever physical punishment left behind bruises visible a day later it crossed the line into abuse.

Violence

He also added that many people believe that violence in the public school system escalated when government took away teacher's rights of administering physical punishment in the classrooms.

"But that is not the problem, the problem is the government didn't teach the teachers how to provide effective discipline without corporal punishment," said Mr Brennen. "Teachers felt disarmed, they felt like something was taken from them because they had no other skill to provide punishment.

"When a teacher physically punishes a disobedient child, you have to ask is that child coming from a disciplined environment?

"What is that child going to learn from this, can he reason effectively, can he use this incident as a teaching moment and not a reactionary moment?

"Too many of our children are blamed and ashamed in the community so when they get hit in the class, it's only reinforcing that anger with them."

According to the Ministry of Education, corporal punishment is a legal form of disciple in public schools but only when carried out by a senior mistress, senior master, principal or vice-principal.

About two weeks ago, a 15-year-old C I Gibson student claimed she was hit by a school official with a metal rod wrapped in black tape and left with black and blue bruises on her right arm and buttocks. Education Minister Carl Bethel said his ministry was investigating the claim.

Published On:Monday, October 05, 2009