Misconception #16: Getting rid of the paddle was a mistake

If you can give kids a good hard whack, you can get them to fall in line. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth it.

There’s a question here that nobody is willing to ask. What are we trying to get them to fall in line with? Mindless conformity. Why would anyone demand that? Society is better off of we all work together and utilize our unique strengths. To impair developing children isn’t worth even the smallest bruise.

This is a classic example of society’s “teachers can do no wrong” mentality. When teachers turn learning into a chore, everybody blames the children who were born with a natural desire to learn for not wanting to learn. Who these students are is viewed as unacceptable, and we must resort to abuse to force them into the single mold that all teachers use.

There is also another issue to deal with. Did the schools really get rid of abuse, or did they only get rid of physical abuse? The answer, of course, is that they didn’t get rid of abuse. Instead, they replaced physical abuse with emotional abuse.

I’m sure that someone out there is thinking, “Oh great. You are one of those whack jobs that thinks that we should protect children from ever having hurt feelings.” That’s not what emotional abuse is about. What I’m talking about is the insistence that students must give up their childhoods entirely to their teachers or else live every minute of every day of their miserable lives as failures who can’t afford the necessities of life. In other words, their very survival relies on them raising their hands and getting permission to go to the bathroom.

In all fairness, discrimination has added validity to the emotional abuse. That still doesn’t make it right. This is a mentally and emotionally scarring treatment of children that can have lingering effects that last a lifetime, and emotional abuse is very real and prevalent in the schools.

We replaced a literal paddle with a figurative paddle and did little more than alter how we abuse children. We might not beat students into submission any more, but abuse in the schools is still far too excessive.