ACLU Suing Over Paddlin’s? That Should Be A Paddlin’
Posted on August 20, 2008
The ACLU, in cahoots with Human Rights Watch has released a “study” that shows in states where paddling is allowed minority and disabled students get a “disproportionate” amount of the paddlin’.
For the study, which was being released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union used Education Department data to show that, while paddling has been declining, racial disparity persists.
It gets a bit rough after the jump.
Aside from the fact that listening to the ACLU on discipline is like listening to a fox about how to secure a hen house, what really bugs me is this whole swing away from “corporal punishment.” Since we don’t swear on this site I am going to to have to use a lot of asterisks from here on out because I am about to lay out a case for the good old fashioned a**whippin’.
Now, first off let’s discuss this whole “disproportionate” number of minorities and disabled that get these a**whippings. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, the reason minorities are getting “paddled” more often than other kids may be linked into the never ending downward spiral of the “minority” community. They have a higher incidence of ending up in jail, and there is no stigma placed on them in their community because of their tendency to commit crimes and go to prison, so what would make one think there would be a stigma about getting in trouble in school? Maybe the reason “minorities” get paddled more is simply because they do more to EARN it. If this were shown to be the case at least this is one instance of them earning what they received.
As for the disabled kids getting their heinies tanned for misbehaving many kids labeled “disabled” have “behavioral problems” and also have most likely earned their paddling. Now I know a bunch of you are probably going to throw all kinds of hissy fits in the comments about “beating mentally disabled children” and say what a horrid person I am for saying it but before you get on your high horse and try to lecture me perhaps you should know a little something for the record.
I have, and have had since I was a wee youngster, serious physical medical problems. At least, everyone around me claimed they were serious. I never let them stop me, and when I was a youngster with a nephrostomy tube in my side accompanied by the bag that stood in for my bladder the most constant refrain I heard was “GET OUT OF THE TREE!” Now I don’t tell you this for sympathy, because as far as I am concerned sympathy can be found in the dictionary between sh*t and syphillis. I tell you this to establish the fact that I grew up in a world in which mainstreaming “handicapped” kids didn’t happen, therefore I was sent to a “special” school full of “handicapped” children. We had physically handicapped children (who would prove to be some of the smartest and most capable people I ever met in my life) and mentally handicapped children (read; retarded) who, even though they were deemed mentally retarded KNEW between right and wrong and were held very accountable for their actions.
I have seen “retarded” people who knew better than to misbehave and chose to do so anyhow. Holding them accountable for their actions is the only way they will learn. With all the lobbying groups who constantly tell us how capable the “disabled” are one would think they would welcome the chance for disabled to be brought into the mainstream and treated like all the other kids who misbehave.
What I would like to see, and what this study seems to not have addressed (as of this writing I am still looking for the study) is the graduation rates of the children who get paddled. What are the incarceration rates of kids that get paddled? How many of these kids don’t go on to a life of crime of welfare because they are taught there are consequences for their actions?
Honestly we need to go back to the days where a paddling in school was the least of your worries. When I was a kid and we got into trouble in school we just knew when we got home the school would have called our parents and explained to them what happened and how they had handled it. We also knew if our parents got a call from the school the trouble we got into in school was the least of our worries. In those days when you acted up and (as grandma used to say) showed your a** you were in for an a**whipping of almost epic proportions. It USED to be getting in trouble was something kids tried very hard to avoid. Now kids know if they do something wrong mom will stand against the school because they just know their precious little snowflake would never ever act up like that and someone must have driven them to it by oppressing them or some such nonsense.
I’d also wager the drop in paddling can be directly correlated to a rise in idiot liberal lawyers. Think about it. We have lessened the places paddling occurs and now we have more idiots liberal lawyers who have nothing better to do than whine about the number of kids being paddled. There must be a connection. Maybe the ACLU can commission a study of THAT, eh?
Anyway, I call B*LLSH*T. Paddle those little rat b**tards when they get out of line and let them know there are consequences for misbehaving. Maybe if we’d get a little more paddling we would have a whole lot less useless adults blaming everyone and everything for their own failings and misdeeds. And maybe, just maybe it would cut down on the exploding number of ACLU lawyers who have nothing better to do than undermine the discipline of this nations children.
Update: Michelle Malkin weighs in!
America’s problem isn’t that we’re too tough and cruel in the classroom. It’s that we’ve grown too soft and coddly, too ashamed and too cowed to assert authority and take unilateral action to guarantee a secure environment. Exactly where the human rights groups want us.
» Filed Under ACLU, Education, Liberal Media/Bias, Multiculturalism/PC, News, Parenting, Secular Humanism, Stupidity
Trackback URL
Comments
6 Responses to “ACLU Suing Over Paddlin’s? That Should Be A Paddlin’”
Leave a Reply
Kender, I just must say…this post rocks!
As it turns out 8 of the 10 states with the highest rates of paddling also have the highest rates of incarceration. Further, 12 of the 13 heaviest paddling states having the lowest graduation rates in the nation averaging only 43% graduation versus 66% average among non-paddling states. On the ACT, 89% of non-paddling states scored ABOVE the national mean, while 64% of paddling states scored BELOW the national mean. Oh, yeah, and paddling states also have higher rates of on-campus shootings and higher levels of violence towards teachers.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights Compiled by The Center For Effective Discipline
Jay,
That dang add you’re carrying on your site obstructs the text of the article.
Great post, coming from a former paddlee.
Well Beatkid,
Seems to me that we might need a refresher on the difference between correlation and causation, but it’s hard to tell from your tone. Anyway, for the record, seems to me that the states with lowest graduation rates and the highest rates of incarceration might, just *might* have the highest number of students who need paddling. Just saying.
Anyhow, the libtards are intellectually bankrupt on this issue. We shouldn’t discipline, we should expel. Expelled students can’t get jobs, end up criminals. “We shouldn’t incarcerate, we should reform.” So please tell me when the solution is to take action and not make the problem someone else’s problem?
So next time I hear the winging paean of “there has to be a better waaaaaaaaaaaaay!” my response, will as always be…
Tell me YOUR plan.
Until then, I will take responsibility for my actions, and teach my children to take responsibility for their own.
And the rest of you who want to make the entire world innocent of personal responsibiltiy, you can shut the “H”-”E”-double-hockey sticks up.
I take personal responsibility for the discipline of my own children. I don’t need a school official to step in and do it for me. They can’t even keep children safe from the sexual abusers they hire.
I am not opposed to a parent giving their kid the odd swat on the tush, although I would prefer it to always be with an open hand. Still, the factual support for corporal punishment as a means of improving school performance is not there.
If you consider paddling to be an advantage in education, then you must see the disturbing implications of relatively middle class suburban kids from Mississippi being outperformed by inner city students from New York when youngsters in Mississippi get the ‘advantage’ of being paddled more than anyone in the country, while no child has been paddled in a New York City School for 100 years. To broaden the perspective perhaps you think America should be grateful that China, Japan, Germany, and Switzerland banned corporal punishment of students years ago, since they otherwise would have taken over our manufacturing, engineering, and pharmaceuticals industries much sooner.
I think we should be modeling our schools on schools systems that work. Your point seems to be that schools worked fifty years ago, and that the only significant thing that has changed since then is the removal of paddling. I think this is a foolish thing to say, and I’ll use my own family as an illustration of why.
My mother was one of nine kids raised on a farm in rural Ohio. Mom studied hard because she didn’t want to spend her life shoveling pig manure and taking a crap in a little wooden hut while squatting over a reeking hole in the ground. Sure, they had paddling at school, but the major motivator was neither fear of punishment nor lofty ideals but rather a very sensible desire for comfort, ease, a pleasant environment, good food, nice things, and engaging entertainment.
It is hard to imagine kids today wanting a better life than the one they already have. To suggest that the biggest difference is a lack of paddling or that the discomfort of being spanked could ever motivate as effectively as the discomfort of sharing a bed with two siblings is intellectually bankrupt.
Even if fear of a spanking had been a main motivation for studying, you must admit that disengaging from the non-stop entertainment smorgasbord of modern childhood long enough to do home work is probably far more unpleasant to most kids than enduring the very brief discomfort of a school paddling.
In fact, if you gave my mom, at age twelve, a choice between staying on the farm and never being paddled at school, or living the life of a modern teen and being paddled every single day, she would have chosen the paddle. When I was nine I would have let you whip me for a half and hour to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii for an entire afternoon — are you kidding me?
My answer to improving schools is to model our systems on what works. Beyond that I can’t explain to exactly how school districts that don’t paddle have been consistently producing the world best educated youngsters for the last three decades, any more than I can explain how doctors perform open heart surgery. But I can tell you that not only are people are doing it, they are doing it better.