MSNBC Anchor Paddles Catholic School Over Corporal Punishment
MSNBC's Richard Lui questioned and generally disagreed with a St. Augustine High School alum who supported the school's 60 year tradition of corporal punishment – paddling – in a story MSNBC apparently thinks merits national attention.
Before the most recent school year, St. Augustine's, a Catholic high school in New Orleans, did away with corporal punishment after the Archbishop of New Orleans Gregory Aymond quietly voiced concerns about it with school officials. The archdiocese had actually forbade Catholic schools from using corporal punishment for years, but St. Augustine's kept with its paddling tradition.
The controversy is not over, as the majority of participants in a recent townhall discussion – alumni, teachers, parents, and students – actually supported corporal punishment as a means of character formation. Administration of paddling as punishment is featured in the guidebook given to parents before each school year, and they reportedly consent to it. Alumni have voiced their support of it in the past and even now. Yet MSNBC's Lui thought himself educated enough on the matter to comment on it.
Lui began by asking innocuous questions, although he was clearly concerned about the form of punishment. When Reese clarified that the paddles were the size a fraternity might have used in the past for hazing, Lui responded that "that does not bring up good connotations when you bring up that example."
"Now a New Orleans Archbishop said here Judge, that there's some research out there that shows violence basically fosters violence. It's probably the last thing you want," Lui provocatively told Reese. When Reese concluded that the discipline was "successful" in forming good young men, Lui added that the punishment was "very debatable, as well."
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Comments
I call b.s. on Lui
Submitted by TexasMom0517 on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 7:13pm.
There's a difference between "violence fosters violence" (which, as far as I can see, is characteristic of all of the video games played by the current generation) and enforcing discipline. It seems to me that those who grew up in the eighties and nineties have little respect for authority and have an attitude that life is cheap, violence is requisite. Get rid of "World of Warcraft," rap music, and pop culture and bring back detentions and paddling. Adults want to be "friends" with their kids and don't want to discipline them and the kids are overprivileged and entitled.
Texasmom
Submitted by Radical1979 on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 7:29pm.
I'm with you. These kids know the corporal punishment is not random, but a consequence of their behavior. Secondly, attending this school is a choice, not mandatory. I would not like to see it in a public school, but as you pointed out, with everything else kids are exposed to violence-wise, this is nothing.
To paraphrase a line from "Everybody Loves Raymond", "You're not a parent till your kid tells you he hates you".
You are much too trusting
Submitted by Unsane on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 12:56am.
Parents should do the paddling, not the teachers. Principals and teachers are not to be trusted under any circumstances with that kind of authority.
It's strange to me how many parents are so willing to turn over such power to a stranger, an ephemeral figure, like a teacher.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
Heh, at the private school I attended for ten years...
Submitted by Dave. on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 7:29pm.
...there was a paddle with my initials on it by my third year there.
-Dave
Vote for the American in November
Lack of understanding.
Submitted by Ashrak on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 7:41pm.
Violence does beget violence. (same thing)
Fighting back stops fighting. (Different things)
Some people are incapable of understanding that there is a difference, much less what the difference actually is.
Killing someone in agression - murder.
Killing someone in defense from their aggression - no murder.
Some might say killing is killing, but they would be quite wrong.
Paddling
Submitted by Unsane on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 12:51am.
I got mixed feelings about this. Private schools - knock yourselves out paddling your kids. If that's what the parents want - that's their business.
However, in my personal experience, the principals and teachers who so badly want to paddle kids hate children. They just want to lord it over them. I knew a vice principal back in the day who I suspect deeply, deeply enjoyed hitting children - he wouldn't stop threatening it. And he was known to do it without permission from the parents. That may be why he was no longer a vice principal there the year after I left that school.
One day I'll have children of my own, and it will not be a happy time for them if they as much as touch one of my kids. But that's just me.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
Pain as Punishment of Children in U.S. Schools
Submitted by KidsRpeople2 on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 7:32am.
Corporal punishment has a negative effect on students,is discriminatorily applied, teaches children that violence is an effective way to resolve problems, and there is no evidence that it helps decrease disciplinary problems in schools. Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA), a co-sponsor of a federal bill "Ending Corporal Punishment in U.S Schools Act", said at the press conference that corporal punishment is a civil rights issue. “The fact that schools are applying school discipline policies in a discriminatory manner based on race, color, national origin, disability or gender constitutes a civil rights violation and is wrong,” said Scott. Data from the federal Department of Education and several scholarly longitudinal studies have also demonstrated that black elementary and secondary students endure physical punishment along with school suspensions and expulsions at dramatically disproportionate rates. During the 2006-07 school year, for instance, black students made up 17 percent of the nationwide student population but nearly 36 percent of those paddled in schools.The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights must wake up to the fact that Schoolchildren are the only group of people legally subjected to corporal/physical pain as punishment. Any person hitting another person or animal with a wooden board in public would be arrested for assault. Recent shocking incidents include a 12-year old girl bleeding and bruised after being paddled by a male school administrator in Ark., Two 17-year old girls paddled by a male TX school administrator, an IN elementary school principal on video aired on CNN assaulting an 8-year old boy on a school bus, a video of a MS coach whipping a high school basketball player aired on CNN 11/11/2010 and a 12-year old AL boy beaten for failing a science test! Parents are unable to bring charges as teachers/school employees are protected by "Teacher Immunity Laws" from criminal/civil action. The Medical Community is Opposed to school paddling based on research that it is harmful. Unfortunately, American schoolchildren's human/constitutional/civil rights continue to be politicized by our supposed elected "representatives" who remain indifferent to the numerous costly societal ills that we all must bear from harm caused by this barbaric practice in our tax-payer funded schools. Even our nation's Federal Courts and the U.S. Supreme Court uphold beatings of schoolchildren and decline to hear school corporal punishment appeals as the laws allow it with no limits, no protocol, no accountability. Parents have no legal redress when their children are injured! In 21st Century American classrooms, corporal punishment is illegal in schools in 30 states, that's the majority of our nation, making corporal punishment qualify as "Cruel and Unusual Punishment".
Get the facts, search and read "A Violent Education". Texas schools report paddling/pain as punishment of approx. 50,000 students each year. Please view and SIGN and SHARE the PETITION at http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-corporal-punishment-in-texas-schools
Also, please Demand U.S. Congress enact legislation to "End Corporal/Physical Pain as Punishment of Children in U.S. Schools".
Violence
Submitted by Unsane on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 8:28am.
But violence, in many cases, IS the answer. And violence WORKS. I didn't need a power-tripping vice-principal to tell me that (I personally think his reason for paddling children was sexual). I only needed to study history; something you might have slept through IF you don't think violence can in fact be an answer.
The reason I am not okay with corporal punishment is much more philosophical. Parents are intimately involved with every aspect of their children's lives. (Or should be.) Teachers are no closer than strangers. Thus, teachers cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted. (Events in WI reveal that they can barely do their jobs as it is.)
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
Spamtastic
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 9:11am.
.
The addition of the stats for the punishment of black---
Submitted by matthewdean on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 11:49pm.
children appears to be liberal gratuitousness; punishment is punishment and kids are kids. It is that kind of unrequired political correctness that causes, real or imagined, the appearance of a biased agenda.