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Throughout history, the physical disciplining of children has been common in most countries. The Greeks and Spartans used spanking. The ancient Egyptians and some American Indian tribes did, too. But whatever human history and cultural tradition may seem to dictate, as numerous studies have conclusively determined, the bottom line is spanking just doesn't work.
This from the New York Times Motherlode blog:
"Six years ago the psychologist Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, then at Columbia University, published a review of 62 years of research, analyzing 82 separate studies. And while there was a lot of evidence that spanking makes children do what they are told in the very short term, it seems only to teach children not to get caught. What it doesn't do is teach them to do better."
In recent decades, as civilized people in general have become a little smarter, they have seen the wisdom in refraining from hitting their kids. They have begun to learn other, more effective methods of discipline. The corporal punishment of children is now illegal in 24 countries, including Germany, Italy, Greece, Chile, and all of Scandanavia. What's interesting is that spanking remains legal in all primarily English-speaking countries--the US, the UK, Australia, South Africa, and Canada--except New Zealand.
I think it depends on the child/situation. I was spanked by my parents and I turned out fine.
I think this is just a matter of sensibility. You can spank and end up with a good kid, you can not spank and end up with a good kid.
When a 3 year old insists on climbing onto a window sill 3 stories above the ground, regardless of how comprehensively you instruct him not to, he should have an association of pain with the activity not in proportion to the potential consequence of his action.
The questions raised by such an opinion are, first, whether such instructional pain (if pain indeed should accompany the infraction at all) ought to be inflicted by a parent or caregiver, and second, whether the inflicted pain actually teaches a child anything useful that could not have been taught more effectively by a more thoughtful parent. The firm answers, borne out by extensive research over decades, are "no" and "no."
By the way, Malamis, I live not far from Gerald Bull's long-abandoned Space Research compound that straddles the border between North Troy, Vermont, and Quebec. When Bull fell out of favor with the US Defense Department and found himself charged with and convicted of illegal arms trading, he gave up on his space gun enterprise (a prototype sat on the grounds here for years) and moved to Europe, where he was ultimately killed by Israeli agents for striking a super-gun deal with Saddam Hussein.
You sir have a customer.Bull occupies a section of my novel, COLD COMFORT, the first in a series of three literary suspense novels set in Vermont. The most recent is called THE FIFTH SEASON (Three Rivers Press). The third will be out in the fall of this year. My publisher in the UK is Robert Hale, if you have an interest.
He then made significant orders from around the world to complete a new space gun in Iraq, as well as a handful of other ballistics projects, drawing on several Manchester & Birmingham area Ironmasters. T'Internet tells me that they were seized before shipment (and some are on display in the Imperial War Museum), but after he had died. Since it was pretty much him and nobody else who could pull off the space gun, which could conveniently be used to lob ordnance into Israel as well, the project was abandoned and space tech was set back Emperor knows how long.
I'd argue that he had to be single minded, because cannon based space tech does not hold as much internal political clout. All you need is one guy to get it right, a handful of iron casters, logistics and the chemical engineers really. Rocket space tech employs hundreds of thousands of voters in doing something that is, frankly, a stupendous waste of money in all but it's single redeeming function: safely getting folk past the grip of gravity.Right you are. Way offf-topic for this thread, but as I recall, Hussein ostensibly wanted the suger gun to launch an Iraqi space satellite and thus upgrade his status in the region. But of course any big cannon could also launch ordnance into Israel, as you say. He was a genius, Bull was, but blinded by his singular vision. He really believed his superior mind somehow gave him some exalted, protected status.
There wasnt actually anything to expose. I came across a civil engineering forum a while back that talked about how everyone up to and including the British customs office knew what was going on, and they frankly didn't care until ( you guessed it) politics came into play. You cant get a .5 km long, 1m bore, perfectly smooth barrel produced without someone drawing some fairly obvious conclusions.I think segments of the barrel ordered by Hussein had been manufactured in England (sounds as though you would know better), and they were intercepted somehow, which exposed the plan.
If you could source this I'd be extremely gratefulBull didn't care who funded the project; he simply wanted to make the gun. He still holds the altitude record for a fired projectile, I believe. It was launched from Barbados.
He's one of my (secular) heroes who aren't involved in the FOSS movement. Were it not that I'm rather financially and ideologically committed (for now at least) in my career path, i'd jump the gun and try and continue his work. I personally dream of man economically shooting spent nuclear fuel containers at Venus/Sol before the end of my lifetime, albeit from orbital relay facilitiesAll this makes me curious as to your interest in Bull.
I hadn't thought of that..The compound here in Vermont was extraordinary. Because it straddled the border he could export mortar rounds and other arms out of either the US or Canada, depending on which country's laws were better conducive to the deal he had going down.
sorry but that sounds biased from the get go. look at the title obviously it is considering spanking abuse.Those with an interest in learning more about the current thinking and findings with respect to spanking will gain much by visiting Alice Miller's Web site: "Child Abuse and Mistreatment."
"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably — or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places — these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."
I had tried to imagine such things happening in our schools. I simply couldn't. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one — "Mr. Dubois, didn't they have police? Or courts?"
"They had many more police than we have. And more courts. All overworked."
"I guess I don't get it." If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad . . . well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such things just didn't happen.
Mr. Dubois then demanded of me, "Define a 'juvenile delinquent.' "
"Uh, one of those kids — the ones who used to beat up people."
"Wrong."
"Huh? But the book said — "
"My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit 'Juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it. Have you ever raised a puppy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you housebreak him?"
"Err . . . yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.
"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"
"What? Why, he didn't know any better; he was just a puppy.
"What did you do?"
"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."
"Surely he could not understand your words?"
"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"
"But you just said that you were not angry."
Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think I was. He had to learn, didn't he?"
"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn't know that he was doing wrong. Yet you indicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"
I didn't then know what a sadist was — but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he's in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again — and you have to do it right away! It doesn't do a bit of good to punish him later; you'll just confuse him. Even so, he won't learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it's a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you've never raised pups."
"Many. I'm raising a dachshund now — by your methods. Let's get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class . . . and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it? Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret — in many places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."
(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)
"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as 'cruel and unusual punishment.' " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment — and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for 'unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"
"Uh . . . probably drive him crazy!"
"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of this school last had to switch a pupil?"
"Uh, I'm not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped — "
"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals — They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning — a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished — and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation — 'paroled' in the jargon of the times.
"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called 'juvenile delinquent' becomes an adult criminal — and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder. You — "
He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house . . . and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"
"Why . . . that's the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"
"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"
"Uh . . . why, mine, I guess."
"Again I agree. But I'm not guessing."
"Mr. Dubois," a girl blurted out, "but why? Why didn't they spank little kids when they needed it and use a good dose of the strap on any older ones who deserved it — the sort of lesson they wouldn't forget! I mean ones who did things really bad. Why not?"
"I don't know," he had answered grimly, "except that the time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves 'social workers' or sometimes 'child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder — but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious 'highest motives' no matter what their behavior."
"But — good heavens!" the girl answered. "I didn't like being spanked any more than any kid does, but when I needed it, my mama delivered. The only time I ever got a switching in school I got another one when I got home and that was years and years ago. I don't ever expect to be hauled up in front of a judge and sentenced to a flogging; you behave yourself and such things don't happen. I don't see anything wrong with our system; it's a lot better than not being able to walk outdoors for fear of your life — why, that's horrible!"
"I agree. Young lady, the tragic wrongness of what those well-meaning people did, contrasted with what they thought they were doing, goes very deep. They had no scientific theory of morals. They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives) but their theory was wrong — half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry. The more earnest they were, the farther it led them astray. You see, they assumed that Man has a moral instinct."
"Sir? But I thought — But he does! I have."
"No, my dear, you have a cultivated conscience, a most carefully trained one. Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not — and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind. These unfortunate juvenile criminals were born with none, even as you and I, and they had no chance to acquire any; their experiences did not permit it. What is 'moral sense'? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, everywhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do."
"But the instinct to survive," he had gone on, "can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. Young lady, what you miscalled your 'moral instinct' was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale. And so on up. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive — and nowhere else! — and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts."
"We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race — we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations. But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: 'Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.' Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.
"These juvenile criminals hit a low level. Born with only the instinct for survival, the highest morality they achieved was a shaky loyalty to a peer group, a street gang. But the do-gooders attempted to 'appeal to their better natures,' to 'reach them,' to 'spark their moral sense.' Tosh! They had no 'better natures'; experience taught them that what they were doing was the way to survive. The puppy never got his spanking; therefore what he did with pleasure and success must be 'moral.'
"The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand — that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their 'rights.' "
"The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature."
Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'?"
"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called 'natural human rights' that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
"The third 'right'? — the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. "I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."
"And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights' . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure."
I wondered how Colonel Dubois would have classed Dillinger. Was he a juvenile criminal who merited pity even though you had to get rid of him? Or was he an adult delinquent who deserved nothing but contempt?
sorry but that sounds biased from the get go. look at the title obviously it is considering spanking abuse.
right these modern day "experts" are the ones who gave us global warming and communism. I try to think for myself instead of listening to experts whose incentives give them reason to agree with the majority.However it may sound to you "from the get-go," if you have a sincere interest in the issue, you might welcome the chance to learn something helpful and enlightening by giving a careful look to what someone who is a widely acknowledged expert in the field has to say.
i never have opinions. i have concrete facts. and all human history seems to support me on this one. all those failed monarchs for example never were spanked. while spanking has for most of history helped keep children civilized.What Dr. Miller has learned by studying and researching the issue of corporal punishment for many years may be quite persuasive. She may assert her case and support her arguments with clear and compelling evidence. How do you know whether she does or not? To cling stubbornly and dismissively to one's preconceptions is an insult to one's own ability to learn. The question you may want to ask yourself is: Do I want to know more or am I satisfied with my unsupported opinions?
these modern day "experts" are the ones who gave us global warming and communism. I try to think for myself instead of listening to experts whose incentives give them reason to agree with the majority.
I have read many such "studies" in psych class, maybe not hers specifically but others, and have found them biased.
i never have opinions. i have concrete facts
never let a good argument get the better of your common sense.
all those failed monarchs for example never were spanked.
my history textbook, which happens to say that king Louis XVI of France had never been spanked and had in fact never even been allowed to fall down. as a result he became an unsure youth and a bad king
I mostly agree with this.It's when people neglect to draw the line between discipline and abuse that trouble arises; either kids get beaten, or people shy away from all forms of corporal punishment, ....
Maybe someone should invent a special pressure sensitive glove that can beep and alert parents that they're hitting harder than what 4 out of 5 doctors and psychologists say is acceptable.
agreeing in a jokingly manner = not actually agreeing at all.you're agreeing here
I mostly agree with this.
Maybe someone should invent a special pressure sensitive glove that can beep and alert parents that they're hitting harder than what 4 out of 5 doctors and psychologists say is acceptable.