If you have a choice as to which side you take in this debate, you should probably take the side against corporal punishment. This is because there are many good arguments against corporal punishment in schools and few good arguments for it. As things stand right now, there are not any social science studies that show that corporal punishment is actually a good thing.
The main arguments in favor of corporal punishment in schools say that it will make the children better students and better people. Many people feel that kids in schools today do not behave well. They do not care if they get detention or if they get suspended. Therefore, they act out in class and make it hard for others to learn. Some people argue that corporal punishment would fix this. They say that students would be much more afraid of paddling than of detention or suspension because it would hurt and it would be humiliating. They argue that students would really want to avoid being paddled and so they would behave in class.
People can also argue that corporal punishment would make students into better people in the long run. They say that kids today do not respect authority as much as they should. If teachers could administer corporal punishment, these people argue, kids would grow up respecting authority. This would mean that they would not be as likely to get into serious trouble as adults. Backing all of this up is the idea that students were paddled back in the good old days when things were better than they are now. Corporal punishment did not harm those kids and our schools and our society were better in those days. If we allowed corporal punishment in schools, things would be like this again.
On the other hand, there are many arguments against corporal punishment in schools. There are numerous studies that show that kids who are punished physically end up doing worse in school and in life. These studies say that students who are punished in this way have lower test scores on average and are more likely to have behavioral problems as they grow up.
In addition, some people believe that corporal punishment actually does not make students likely to be better people. Instead, they argue, it makes students think that violence is an acceptable way to deal with problems. It makes them believe that people who have power have the right to use physical violence against those who have no power. This leads them to be more violent in their own lives.
A second argument against corporal punishment is that most people are against it. Polling shows that the vast majority of American parents do not want school staff administering corporal punishment to their children. This is true even among parents who believe in spanking their own kids. They are fine with doing it themselves but they do not want the schools to do it. Since we live in a democracy, we should go with majority opinion and ban corporal punishment in schools.
A third argument is that corporal punishment in schools is administered in an unfair way. Most students believe that teachers like some students and dislike others. If teachers could paddle kids, wouldn’t they do so arbitrarily? That is, wouldn’t they be much more likely to paddle kids they didn’t like for doing a given thing and let kids they do like get away with the behavior? Moreover, studies have shown that non-white kids get punished a lot more than white kids. Might teachers (consciously or not) be more likely to administer corporal punishment to non-white students?
For these reasons, almost all experts on education are opposed to corporal punishment in schools. However, there are still people who believe in traditional ways and who think that such punishment is appropriate. This is why there are still 19 states, mostly in the South, where schools are allowed to use corporal punishment against students.
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