Destiny
We ate pizza at Davanni's today, and in celebration of their 30 year anniversary they have been posting trivia questions about 1975. Correct answers to the question result in a whopping 30-cent discount off of your total.
Today's question was: "In 1975 this group ruled that paddling of misbehaving children was acceptable in certain circumstances." Naturally the answer to this question is: "My parents".
In truth, though I certainly experienced some spankings from my parents, by and large I wasn't a kid who received a lot of physical discipline. I think that was a combination of relatively good behavior, excellent cover-ups of bad behavior, and relatively pacifist parents. As a parent, with perhaps one or two exceptions when Linus was three and extremely belligerent, we haven't needed or wanted to use any physical discipline techniques. Whether that's because we've done a good job of making our kids behave, or just having good kids to begin with, or just luck, I couldn't say.
I did, however, experience corporal punishment during my school years, at the relatively late age of eighth grade. We had a principal in my middle school named Jack Strukel, who was an active two-star general in the Army Reserves or something. In fact, he was assigned to active duty just after I left for high school. As you can imagine, Mr. Strukel was somewhat enthusiastic about discipline, and his method of choice was a paddle that he called "Destiny". I can't recall if Destiny had holes in it or not, to reduce air resistance for more effective swinging, but I can assure you that Destiny was a subject of much conversation at Chase Middle School.
The circumstances that led me to meet Destiny were, in retrospect, silly. Our school was new, and had a strict rule against having food in classes. Another kid named Ronnie Mock had some powdered donuts he brought to class, and as we waited for the class to begin I decided not only to eat them, but to pretend the powdered sugar was cocaine. Mr. Workman, the eighth grade English teacher, walked into class and saw my cheeks full of donut and powdered sugar spread all over my desk and face, and it was only a short time later that I was waiting outside Mr. Strukel's office, awaiting my date with Destiny.
He called me in, asked me what had happened. He wasn't one for chit-chat, and within seconds he was telling me to spread my feet and lean slightly forward to put my hands on his desk. I was just about to turn and ask him a question when I felt two hard smacks on my rump. Destiny, meet my ass. Moments later, I was sitting back in class, looking at Ronnie Mock and wondering why he wasn't there right beside me.
I'm not sure where I stand on corporal punishment. I think teachers have a damned tough job, and they should have a variety of tools in their arsenal, so to speak, to deal with problem children. I also think it's tough for people in their 30's or older to appreciate some of the issues today's teachers face. Kids have changed, no question. And, I think some kids, for a variety of reasons, respond better to certain types of punishments.
That said, corporal punishment seems like a copout to me. I think it's the path of least resistance, legal issues notwithstanding, for many teachers and parents. Tempers get short, and it's just easier to whack kids. My gut feeling is that withholding privileges is a more effective tool, and that the administration of corporal punishment is in reality an indictment of the person or institution that is holding the paddle, that they just weren't creative or patient enough to invest the time to establish an effective reward and punishment system that isn't based on violence. It's difficult to preach non-violence to kids, an increasingly important value in so many communities, when kids know that their own teachers and parents view violence and physical pain as an effective tool for behavior control. Easy for me to say; I don't spend my day dealing with discipline problems in a classroom.
I think it was a lot different 20 years ago. I have vivid memories of teachers throwing chalk at students to get them to shut up, or pulling students' hair in a fit of frustration. Some of that behavior was clearly inappropriate even at the time, but the consequences weren't as ominous then for teachers from a legal or employment perspective.
My favorite memory of a teacher using physical force happened when I was a sophomore in high school. We were in health class, and our teacher was this old-ass curmudgeon named Mr. Driver, who also was one of the driver's ed teachers. Get it? Mr. Driver? My good friend Charlie Sann sat in the back row of the class and spent most of his time in an obvious and very deep sleep. One day Mr. Driver got fed up with it and started yelling. "Hey, Sann!" No reaction from Charlie as the class turned and laughed. "Sann, wake up!" Dead to the world. So Mr. Driver threw the chalkboard eraser he was holding in his hand right at Charlie, and lo and behold it hit Charlie right in the head and came to a rest right on his arms.
As if that wasn't hilarious enough, a giant cloud of chalk dust erupted from the eraser after it hit Charlie's head, and when Charlie awoke abruptly after the impact he found his head completely enveloped in this cloud. He started coughing and was like, "What the...What the hell? Did you just throw this eraser at me?" Mr. Driver started to say something about something, but Charlie didn't stick around to hear it because he up and left the class, perhaps for good but I don't recall. In retrospect, I would have gladly taken an eraser to the head to get out of the rest of that semester listening to Mr. Driver tell us not to give Resuscitation Annie too much tongue.
3:18:31 PM 
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