Corporal Punishment

Corporal Punishment

Introduction

Corporal punishment, once a standard practice of punishment in the school systems, is probably one of the single most controversial and enduring issues in American education. Certainly it is the most controversial topic in the area of school discipline. In America; the use of corporal punishment goes back to colonial times. In Puritan New England, children were viewed as 'creatures of sin' who were 'born evil as well as ignorant. It was the parents' responsibility to introduce the child to the principles of religion so that the child could be 'led away from the evil to which he was naturally prone.

Discussion

Effectiveness of Corporal Punishment

Although the practice prevails, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that corporal punishment is ineffective in permanently extinguishing unwanted behaviors in children. Since the turn of the century, research into punishment in general has been extensive. From his experimentation with animals, Thorndike (1911) concluded that punishment is an effective means of eliminating undesirable behaviors. Later, Thorndike (1932) refuted his own theory, suggesting that punishment can be detrimental to learning. Throughout the latter part of this century, the consensus among theorists is that punishment tends to lead to response suppression, rather than to response elimination.

Side Effects of Corporal Punishment

Aside from being ineffective, there is a great deal of evidence that the use of corporal punishment produces many negative side effects. It has been found that children who have received corporal punishment are often more aggressive than children who were not physically punished. Welsh (1975) found a high correlation between severe parental punishment (physical) and delinquency, an extreme form of aggression. (Waters & Cummings, 2000)reported that even threats of physical punishment by the teacher were positively related to hostile behavior in the student.

Although there is little definite evidence, vandalism, a problem in American schools, is suspected of being associated with receiving corporal punishment in the school. (Seifried, 2010) (Seifried, 2010)found that there is a positive relationship between amount and severity of corporal punishment received by a student in school and the cost of vandalism and theft of school property.

School Achievement and Corporal Punishment

The use of corporal punishment effects not only the child's behavior and attitudes but school achievement as well. Although no other study of this relationship has been completed, there is a great deal of information pertaining to the relationship between school achievement and others types of punitive behavior demonstrated by teachers. All findings suggest that punitive teacher behaviors are related to poor student academic performance.

Attitudes toward Corporal Punishment

In light of the overwhelming evidence of the ineffectiveness of corporal punishment and the negative side effects that it produces, it would seem likely that at least professional educators would deem its use inappropriate. In reviewing the studies related to attitudes toward the use of corporal punishment, it was found that this is not the case. (McLoyd & Smith, 2002) reported that although professional organizations (educational and psychological) overtly oppose corporal punishment, this is not necessarily true for individual ...