Before I reply to any of the individual posts, I'd like to say some more about the general idea of this thread, as there seems to be some lack of clarity about it.
Faramond wrote:
What is this subject?
Is it spanking, or is it abuse of children?
That's probably the wrong question. Many people maintain that spanking is abuse of children, after all.
If I were to reply very briefly I'd say that this is exactly the question of the thread.
Is 'spanking' abuse? Is any kind of violence, physical or emotional 'abuse'? Is only very violent mistreatment 'abuse'? One main idea of the thread is to find out what people's opinions about violence towards children are.
(Maybe I should add, for definition, that by 'violence' I don't only mean extreme forms of mistreatment, but, in a narrower definition, any exertion of force on someone that results in a hurt.)
But there are more questions raised in Faramond's post, which I'd like to answer, too.
Truehobbit didn't start this thread from the perspective of a former child! She started it as an intellecutal excercise, a philosophical game.
No, I started it as an academic discussion, such as we are supposed to have in this forum.
I'm surprised that the idea of an academic approach to raising children seems so alien, but, actually, it is a topic that one may discuss academically.
This does
not make it a 'game'.
who hasn't brought any actual experience to this topic, either as a parent or a child.
I guess you have a point there, although this has partly to do with what I was thinking of for the thread. I'll try to remedy that and then try to explain why I didn't.
When I said in response to Frelga that I was with her completely, I meant that I shared her experiences. However, I realise that this wasn't very clear.
So, I was never spanked or in any other way beaten as a child. Like Frelga, I can only imagine how infuriatingly humiliated and powerless I would have felt, and can't really imagine coping with it.
Also like Frelga, I 'got a few smacks upside the head, nothing that hurt for even a second, but boy do I remember them'. The only thing where I'm unlike Frelga is that it didn't make me angry (and I didn't want to get payback
), instead I was shocked, saddened, disappointed. From what I remember, it happened twice. Both times, I had meant no harm, although in hindsight it must be admitted that harm was what I'd done.
Maybe the fact that I was lucky enough to grow up so peacefully accounts for the fact that, personally, I find the idea of violence terrifying.
But just like I would hope to be able to have a civilised discussion about the death penalty, for example, with someone who thinks it's a good idea, when I find it horrifying, because I'm curious to learn why someone would find it a good idea, and maybe to find some interesting points that I hadn't thought of before, so I'm also hoping to have a civilised discussion about violence towards children.
That is why in the opening post I stated first thing that I thought it was wrong. The idea was to make my stand on the matter known from the outset - in matters where divergent opinions tend to be so far apart, I think it's safer for the preservation of politeness to know from the outset where someone stands at the moment. This is the important matter of the thread.
The reason I hadn't bothered to tell you guys about my personal life in so many words, however, is because
it's not the point of this thread!
Personal experience is invaluable in collecting evidence that helps you draw conclusions, so I'm very grateful for everyone who has shared a little of their own feelings and responses towards hitting children, whether from the giving or receiving angle.
But I would like to stress that it was not my idea to start a mere 'turn your heart and soul inside out'-thread - this is not my type of thing. The idea of sharing these experiences is to use them to rationalise them and arrive at a discussion of what you
think about violence towards children, your
opinions.
Now, out of respect for the personal quality of these experiences, I think that I'd be out of bounds if
I were to rationalise and draw conclusions from experiences others have shared here, so I've only done it in a few instances and, as I hope, carefully. (As, for example, in observing that Alatar and Jny were in agreement about a good reason for a spanking.)
What I'm hoping is that
you analyse your thoughts and feelings and share the results of that. It is not absolutely necessary, for this end, to share personal experiences, although they are of course extremely valuable as examples and illustrations for your opinions.
However, theoretical ideas and thoughts, research data and scholarly theories are just as welcome and useful.
Sorry this is so long, but I felt this needed clarification.
And it might be, but if so it's certainly far down the scale from hitting a kid with a rod or a rock, two examples truehobbit brings up in the first post of the thread that have nothing to do with spanking.
These are not two example, Faramond, it's a parable.
Using a rod for spanking was customary for most of the time, so this is the equivalent of the 'normal' discipline.
The idea of the parable is to show the perception of the child. It only understands the mother wants to cause it some pain, and in its endless love and trust, it accepts this choice of the mother unquestioningly. For the child, what matters is that it should be hurt, so it doesn't see a difference between throwing a stone and spanking with a rod.
For the adult reader of the parable, however, throwing a stone at someone is barbarous, while spanking with a rod is an accepted practice.
The adult who suddenly realises through the eyes of the child that the barbarous and the traditional action are really the same, is supposed to learn from it that all physical violence against children is bad in the same way.
And that's what I would like to discuss. Is it all bad in the same way? Or is there a 'scale' and some things are so far down on that scale that they are acceptable? And if so, which ones?
Personally, I do think there is a scale, but I just can't make up my mind whether some things on the bottom end of it are acceptable. My reason tells me there aren't, but experience and feeling seem to argue that it's not as simple as that.
I'll try to keep responses brief after all that.
Mith, thanks for the further explanation. I think the fact that your mother succeeded to solve her problems pretty soon makes a great difference.
I agree about it all being a case-to-case question. In spite of my general/theoretical opinion that education should be violence-free, I have often wondered whether there maybe
are children who are unable to accept any other message than pain. I know that it's a wide-spread pedagogical belief that there aren't, but I have my doubts, it just seems possible.
(Although, even if I start from supposing there are, I then ask myself what is the reason they are unable?)
nel - first of all I wanted to give you a hug, too, but right after that I just want to thank you for your post, in which after explaining your experiences, you rationalised and drew conclusions from them, just as I had hoped for in this thread. And you raise just the right questions.
To begin with the last one:
My sister and I have both always wondered this, so I have to ask - how common is this stuff?
Finding out about exactly this is the other main idea of the thread.
From my own experience, as much as from the prevalent condemnation violence in education officially receives over here, I used to think that violence in education was either restricted to occasional, harmless lapses or, in the cases higher up the scale, caused by some problem of the person who was exerting the violence, but that its acceptance as a disciplinary method was quite uncommon.
I'd heard the occasional call for the re-introduction of physical violence as a standard measure of discipline, made by desperate teachers or conservative politicians over here, but I didn't think such ideas might be seriously considered by the generality of people as an option.
A few days ago, however, I first heard violence in education discussed as though it was something quite normal, something that even if you don't choose to use it yourself is a thing so normal that it seems to be happening quite a lot to a large number of people, with no one, including the recipients, seemingly finding anything debatable about it.
That's why I became interested to find out how common this view contrasting to mine is, and why it is as common or uncommon as it would turn out to be.
Your two 'issues' are most interesting observations, I thought. I don't really have anything to add to them, and am just nodding in appreciation.
vison, I hope you'll be back.
Lily, I completely agree, sometimes we are going to fail, and that's ok, and, as Prim said a while ago, how your kids turn out may not have as much to do with your education as pedagogues like to think. Parents make a choice, but there's no telling where that choice leads to.
Still, it's interesting, I think, to discuss the pedagogues' theories of where it leads to and compare it to real life experience.
