In the beginning of the 20th Century it was believed that education should take a more progressive direction to match such technological advances as the automobile, powered flight, and sliced bread. This new wisdom suggested, what was at the time, radical changes to a system beleaguered by an influx of urban poor and recent updates in child labor laws of the mid 19th Century. For many years, public educators had been able to count on the same system of control over the student as those teachers who taught in private schools as well as their close partners in the social structure of the Gilded Age, the textiles mills. Specifically, schools were free to dole out physical punishments at will, and without repercussions. However, as Progressivism …show more content…
The reason for this is clear. Public school teachers knew the combined value of such punishments far outweighed the minor issues which might arise from a bruised backside, or even a chipped tooth, or an irate parent. Although some public schools still hold to corporal punishment the child may opt for in lieu of suspension or other punishments (for which contracts and waivers are provided the child must sign and make parental contact) corporal punishment is, unfortunately, a thing of the past. By in large this is not a lamentable condition, but when coupled with the decline in student performance mirroring the decline of use of corporal punishment in the public school, the truth is easy to see. As a nation, we must return the option of corporal punishment to the public school teacher. With that return, one can only hope we will return to a dominant position in rankings of academic achievement as …show more content…
Over the past thirty-five years, it has become exponentially more difficult to control the students in any given classroom. Many education researchers attribute no correlation between classroom management, corporal punishment, and student behavior, citing most instances of student misbehavior can be attributed back to the teacher’s disciplinary style. Unfortunately, many of these studies took place after it was no longer fashionable to use corporal punishment and as such, could not be thoroughly tested along side classes which still incorporated corporal punishment as a regular part of their disciplinary model. In his brilliant essay on child psychology, B.F. Skinner stated children are like pigeons, where a “flock mentality” rules. While Dr. Skinner goes on at length, almost to the detriment of his main point, about the use of tracking collars for children in much the same way ankle bands are used on pigeons, two sentences in the penultimate paragraph makes its point without any ambiguity. He writes, “In all my years as an experimental psychologist, I have been struck by the notion that children and pigeons are quite similar and would respond to most any basic stimuli in the same ways as each other. In fact, I imagine one could physically abuse a child or a pigeon and see essentially the same reaction.” The connection is clear. Pigeons follow the flock mentality. Pigeons and children respond to physical abuse the same way.