Federal Bill H.R. 3027 "The Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act," sponsored by Carolyn McCarthy, is now before congress and it may die soon if it doesn’t receive enough support from Congressmen. This isn’t the first time it has come before congress and apparently it hasn’t passed in 2010; however if enough people write their congressmen then perhaps with enough grass roots support it may pass either this time or the next, hopefully this.
The implications of this bill are far greater than many people realize. This is part of a cycle of escalating violence that leads to much more crime, bullying, domestic violence and many other social problems including indoctrination that encourages children to believe what they’re told to believe without question. I have gone into the details of how this occurs in many other blogs and there are also many peer reviewed academics, some of which I have cited, that have done much more work to indicate how much damage this does to children; however, as usual, the decisions made by Congress continue to be made based on political beliefs and interests not rational academic research or the best interest of the majority.
This bill was brought to my attention by Julie Worley who commented on it in a previous post about sparing the child for Christmas. For more information on the subject see A summation of the bill or the complete bill and status, “A Violent Education” report at ACLU or “Protest our Children” sponsored by friends of Carolyn McCarthy.
I usually don’t like chain letters or other similar activities like chain blogs especially when they’re for something shallow; however when it comes to something that is important enough this could be an important grass roots way to spread the word, so I hope you’ll forgive the following request. If a few of you think this subject is important enough feel free to either ask a few additional people to write their congressmen in addition to writing yours or write a blog with your own input on the subject. The long term impact could be enormous if this bill is passed although many people who don’t understand the full implications may not recognize it.
For some of my favorite blogs plus a summation see my one year best blog review or a complete table of context of my blogs
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R♥
I wrote a piece here abt 2 yrs ago (?) abt when I refused to paddle kids in a public school.
Horrid practice and incredibly dumb.
r.
My husband and I made a written/verbal presentation to our local school board members in April 2008, during "National Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Month" to Demand they Prohibit Physical Punishment of Students in our schools and they ignored us, no letter, no phone call!
Several "School Paddling States" have "Teacher Immunity Laws" to protect teachers, coaches and administrators from criminal/civil action.
Federal and State government officials informed us that school corporal punishment is a "local issue". Federal Courts uphold outrageous incidents of school paddling and the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear school corporal punishment appeals, leaving families of injured schoolchildren no legal redress.
Please add your voice to support Federal Bill to Abolish Corporal Punishment of Students in ALL U.S. Schools at donthitstudents dot com
Jonathan, I remember, actually there were at least two from you and they had to be less than two years ago since I haven’t been on OS long enough to notice older ones.
Julie, thank you for updating me on the bill in the first place, and providing additional information. I don’t live in the south but have heard about how they have treated their children. The paddling that you describe sounds more like cult indoctrination than they do education. One of the worst cases which the Supreme Court did actually hear was the Ingraham v. Wright case in Florida during the late seventies and they ruled in favor of the teachers. This case sounded as bad as the ones you described and there have been additional cases just as bad but the Supreme Court has refused to review the issue as you indicated. In fact the states that have paddling in schools almost certainly have higher violent crime rates than those without. I don’t have exact studies at my fingertips but I believe some like Murray Straus have provided an enormous amount of evidence to back this up.
Thanks all