The Ineffectiveness of Corporal Punishment
Corporal punishment should be banned from use in schools. To better understand why, we must first understand what we mean by corporal punishment. According to Lenta, “corporal punishment is the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain, but not injury for the purpose of correction or control of the child’s behavior” (2012, p 693). Additionally an understanding of what discipline is will give a better understanding of this topic. Discipline, as described by Smith, “involves the teaching of children the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in society” (2006, p 115). This paper seeks to analyze the effects that corporal punishment has on children.
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As said by Lenta, corporal punishment does not provide an effective form of behavioral correction aside from gaining immediate compliance to command (2012). Some may say that there are children who only understands corporal punishment, but, Inasmuch as corporal punishment brings about some form of compliance, the hope of disciplining a child is to impart correct social values as well as ethics into the child not only within the time frame of the punishment being given, but even when one is not around to correct him or her. There are other forms of punishments that accomplishes this goal, Forness and Sinclair in their paper gives various alternatives that are more effective than corporal punishment bring about the same results (1984), for example the use of explanation and reasoning. When the consequences of an action are clearly explained to the child as well as given an alternate behavior that is acceptable, the child would understand the reason behind the punishment and would have available the correct way he or she is supposed to …show more content…
Imagine a classroom where students a caned for getting grades lower than a certain mark and after the exams are caned for falling below the pass mark. It is important to realize that this kind of environment would create fear within the children. Consequently, in this kind of environment where one is punished for not doing well in his or her academics, the student would not be comfortable in making mistakes which are all part of the process of learning. The studies done by Arif and Rafi similarly backs this up. In their research it can be concluded that the pupils who experience corporal punishment do not actually get better, but do worse than those who do not experience it