Each year three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand children are victims of child abuse. Of those children forty percent of those victims are five years old or younger (Berger, G. ). Not everyone has the same opinions about child discipline. On one side of the debate are those people, mostly parents, who feel that any kind of violence, including a slap on the hand or spanking, is harmful (Berger, G.). Parents on the other side of the debate however feel that strict discipline - up to and including corporal punishment such as beating - is necessary to prevent children from growing up “spoiled” (Berger, G.). A 2014 survey showed that a majority of parents say they approve spanking their children. For he past two decades these numbers have …show more content…
The “spanking law” was upheld by the supreme court of Canada in 2004, but it set “reasonable limits” to the act. The court ruled that reasonable corrective force can be used against children between the ages of two and twelve years old (TRC promise puts Liberals on track to repeal spanking laws). These laws should be in place to protect children, not to test the limits of parents hitting their children. These laws have been tested many times over the past few years and are still being tested …show more content…
For example, a video of a Georgia principal sent the debate back into full swing. While many states have banned corporal punishment, such as paddling, in their schools nineteen states, located primarily in the south and to the west still allow the use of corporal punishment in their schools. If a school allows corporal punishment then usually the parents must sign a waiver for their child to be punished that way. For a woman in Georgia, the choice wasn 't voluntary. “I couldn’t do anything to stop them,” Ms. Perez wrote in a post on Facebook accompanying the video (Lewontin, M. (2016, April 15)). The video showed her young son crying and trying to get away and resist the as the principal of a primary school in Jasper paddles him (Lewontin, M. (2016, April 15)). The school was being investigated because they didn’t have parent consent. Later on Facebook, Ms. Perez wrote that the previous problem with the school came after she had been arrested for her son’s truancy and was out on jail bond. Her son had truancy because of an unspecified medical condition in which he had missed eighteen days (Lewontin, M. (2016, April