Order in the Schoolroom

CLASSROOM JUNGLE—Day by day and term by term … the problem of District of Columbia school discipline worsens. It is in the Capital City of the United States that the public school system is called a blackboard jungle. And an act of Congress is deemed necessary to provide that principals and teachers “may use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and maintain order.” Within hollering distance of the Peace Corps headquarters, that agency could find some work to do without traveling halfway around the world for the exercise of its civilizing activities.—Nashville (Tenn.) Banner.

CONGRESSMEN APPROVE WHIPPING—We hope the Senate will promptly follow suit.… The House did a good day’s job in asserting the right of [District of Columbia school principals and teachers] to “use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and to maintain order.” Its clarification, by another bill, of the right of school officials to suspend or dismiss incorrigibles also is useful. These bills ought to become law.—The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), May 15.

THE INDISPENSABLE TOOLS—Give Mr. Hansen and his teachers all the tools they need, paddle included—New York Herald Tribune (European Edition).

REMEDY AGAINST INSOLENCE—Teachers must have more authority than they have now. This represents a change in the point of view, so far as I am concerned.… I now believe that the Board of Education rule prohibiting the use of corporal punishment should be eliminated; and that while teachers do not want extensive use of corporal punishment and probably many would never use it, they want to be relieved of the insolence of the pupil who can say to that teacher, as has been said: “You don’t dare to touch me. You don’t dare to lay a hand on me.”—CARL F. HANSEN, superintendent of schools of the District of Columbia.

PSYCHIATRISTS, NOT PADDLES—In the District of Columbia schools, where discipline is said to be a serious problem, mild paddling is not likely to be very efficacious.… Some of these youngsters—the most troubled and troublesome among them—have never known anything but beating all their lives—beating not with a lightweight paddle but with a fist, a strap, a crowbar. They will respond to “paddling” either with derision or with a blow in return.

The community cannot solve the problems of these young toughs by resorting to the techniques that made them what they are. If Congress wants to help the schools deal with them, let it clear the slums that spawned them and provide decent, low-cost housing instead, let it erase the racial discrimination that keeps them and their parents from getting jobs that offer hope and a chance to get ahead, and, above all, let it equip the schools with teachers and counselors and psychiatrists instead of with “paddles.”

Call it what you will—“beating” or “paddling” or “whipping” … or any of the other circumlocutions which mask the crude reality—corporal punishment involves a renunciation of the teacher’s real superiority over a pupil, an intellectual superiority. It means an abdication of the rule of reason. It is an abandonment of teaching.—The Washington Post.

THE COMMON LAW—Under common law the teacher has the legal status of a conditionally privileged person standing in loco parentis to the pupil.… This principle has been enacted into law. For example, the Oklahoma statute states: “The teacher of a child attending a public school shall have the same right as a parent to control and discipline such a child during the time the child is in attendance … [at school].”—“The Teacher and the Law,” Research Monograph 1959-M3, NEA Research Division, September, 1959.

SPARING THE ROD—My experience as a judge in juvenile matters further convinced me that punishment … is most necessary in many cases of juvenile violations of the rules of our society.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” may seem ancient and barbaric to many of our modern psychologists and sociologists. And I will quickly agree that many of our fine young citizens have grown to manhood or womanhood without being subjected to physical punishment in their childhood, but I have also come in contact with numerous youngsters who understand nothing less than physical punishment.

How well prepared can any person be for the trials of adult life in our modern world if their wrongful acts in childhood have been answered with nothing more than a sympathetic verbal chastisement? To me, a vital part of our educational process is the lesson that violations of the rules of our society must be punished.… How can they believe that punishment will be meted out by society if school officials can take no action against them except a lecture?… Will they feel that adult society will protect them from crimes against them when they see violations go unpunished in their youth? How can we expect to retain our good school instructors when they have no means of effectively maintaining discipline in their classes?—Representative GRAHAM PURCELL (Dem., Texas).

OTHER METHODS WILL WORK—I taught for forty years, and I never felt it necessary to administer corporal punishment. I do not say I never punished children for disobedience.… There are other methods of punishing than using corporal punishment.—ELLIS HAWORTH, chairman, Legislative Committee, D.C. Congress of Parents and Teachers.

HOT SEAT, WARM HEART—Disciplinary measures are justified only when the child experiences in that discipline the love of the disciplinarian. Every punishment given in a hot temper, every chastisement administered in a fit of anger … has the wrong effect, and is, in fact, not Christian discipline.—Jan Waterink, Basic Concepts in Christian Pedagogy, 1955, pp. 67, 68.

THE HICKORY SWITCH—A request by Washington, D.C. public schools for return of the hickory switch brought nods of approval from Brevard educators. Reasonable, supervised corporal punishment has never been forbidden in Florida schools.—Brevard Sentinel.

THE ODDS ARE HIGH—More than two in three elementary school teachers and almost three in four secondary school teachers favored the use of corporal punishment in elementary schools.—NEA Journal, May, 1961, p. 13.

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