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-Editorial: Federal Law Is Needed to Prevent Corporal Punishment in Schools (Time.com) "To residents of much of the country, beating school children sounds like a throwback to the nation’s distant past. In New Jersey, corporal punishment has been illegal since 1867, and in many school districts it has not been heard of for decades. The campaign to ban corporal punishment hit its stride in the 1980s and 1990s, when more than 20 states – including big ones like New York and California – adopted bans."
"Educational experts are in wide agreement that physical punishment in schools is ill advised – that it is unequally meted out, that it can cause serious mental and physical harm, and that it is not effective as other kinds of discipline."
"There are now just 19 states that allow corporal punishment in schools – but that still leaves a lot of students being paddled, hit, or otherwise physically punished." 10-12
-Study: Spanking Leads to More Aggressive Behavior (Time.com) "Disciplining young children is one of the key jobs of any parent — most people would have no trouble agreeing with that. But whether or not that discipline should include spanking or other forms of corporal punishment is a far trickier issue."
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not endorse spanking for any reason, citing its lack of long-term effectiveness as a behavior-changing tactic. Instead the AAP supports strategies such as time-outs when children misbehave, which focus on getting kids to reflect on their behavior and the consequences of their actions. Still, as many parents can attest, few responses bring about the immediate interruption of a full-blown tantrum like a swift whack to the bottom." 04-10
American Academy of Pediatrics Recommends Against Spanking (ReligiousTolerance.org) "They strongly recommend against the use of physical punishment as a form of child discipline. Spanking might make the parent less frustrated; it might cause the child to stop an undesirable behavior. But they regard it as '...the least effective way to discipline.' " 7-05
Council of Europe Bans Corporal Punishment (Council of Europe) "The Assembly also notes that the European Court of Human Rights has found in successive judgments that corporal punishment violates children’s rights as guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights. These decisions applied initially to corporal punishment in young offenders’ institutions, then in schools, including private schools, and most recently within the family. Moreover, both the European Commission of Human Rights until 1998 and the Court have emphasised that banning all corporal punishment does not breach the right to private or family life or religious freedom." 7-05
Global Activism Against Corporal Punishment of Children (EndCorporalPunishment.org) "Detailed state-by-state reports on legality of corporal punishment now available." Also includes results from research. 7-05
Meta-Study Indicates that Corporal Punishment Is Unwise (American Psychological Association - Gershoff) "While conducting the meta-analysis, which included 62 years of collected data, Gershoff looked for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences, including several in childhood (immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse from that parent), three in both childhood and adulthood (mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior) and one in adulthood alone (abuse of own children or spouse)."
"Gershoff found "strong associations" between corporal punishment and all eleven child behaviors and experiences. Ten of the associations were negative such as with increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. The single desirable association was between corporal punishment and increased immediate compliance on the part of the child."
" 'Until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitively demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal punishment, including effectiveness in halting future misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects, we as psychologists can not responsibly recommend its use,' Gershoff writes." 7-05
Preventing Your Own Child from Bullying (Time.com) " 'You can enhance empathy by the way you treat children,' says Martin Hoffman, an emeritus professor of psychology at New York University and a pioneer of empathy research, 'or you can kill it by providing a harsh punitive environment.' "
"Over the long term, the routine use of corporal punishment, such as spanking, not only fails to change behavior for the better, but has also been shown to increase aggression in children."
Results of Studies on the Effects of Spanking (ReligiousTolerance.org) A study of 442 boys from age four through adulthood revealed a genetic trigger for violence if those with the trigger experienced violence as a child. "If physical abuse during childhood almost inevitably produces anti-social violent behavior among the one third of adult males who are genetically predisposed to produce low levels of MAOA, then one wonders what level of corporal punishment is safe. Perhaps conventional levels of spanking could trigger violence many years later when the child has grown up."
In another study, "Information for more than 1,800 children were analyzed. Mothers were asked about incidences of cheating, lying, bullying, breaking things deliberately or getting into trouble at school. They were also asked how often, if ever, they had spanked their child in the previous week. Grogan-Kaylor said that: 'Even minimal amounts of spanking can lead to an increased likelihood in antisocial behavior by children....This study provides further methodologically rigorous support for the idea that corporal punishment is not an effective or appropriate disciplinary strategy.' " 7-05
Spanking - A Religious Conservative Perspective (ReligiousTolerance.org) "The Family Research Council (FRC) has prepared a very thoughtful analysis of corporal punishment from a conservative Christian perspective . 3 They seem to be quite aware of the hazards of spanking - particularly the possibility of corporal punishment escalating in intensity and frequency until it becomes serious abuse."
"Although the FRC advocates spanking as a discipline method, they recommend that its use be severely restricted." 7-05
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