Pro-Whoopin': Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child
Join me on my quest to reinstate Corporal Punishment back into the schools. If kids aren't getting discipline at home or school, then where are they getting it? They're not!
In 1987, a formal organization named the National Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools developed. This coalition included the National Center on Child Abuse Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the Parent-Teacher's Association, the National Education Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, and over 20 other groups who were united in their efforts to ban the practice of physically punishing children and youth in school.
BUT, since this began, the statistics speak for themselves:
Statistics
The statistic by the United States Department of Justice shows that the years prior to 1994 held a dramatic increase in violent crimes in America`s young population between the ages of 14 and 24.
Advocates for corporal punishment in schools feel, as noted by the Ingraham court decision, that it is an efficacious technique of training and discipline. According to this opinion, these children are better controlled, learn appropriate appreciation for authority, develop better social skills as well as improved moral character, and learn to better discipline themselves.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/424107
Youth Violence: Causes and Prevention
Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH
Crime and violence have traditionally been considered to be the bailiwick of the criminal justice system, backed primarily by the research expertise of the disciplines of criminology and sociology. However, the sheer magnitude of the rise in violent injuries and deaths in the 1980s caused violence to be viewed as a public health problem as well. Of particular concern has been the degree to which violence affects the lives of youth. In the mid-1980s, homicide became the leading cause of death among minority youth.
Because pediatricians and child healthcare providers focus on and advocate for the health and welfare of children and adolescents, they are naturally concerned about the problem of youth violence. This session of the PAS/AAP year 2000 joint meeting brought together 3 outstanding criminologists to discuss the state-of-the-art research into causes and prevention of youth violence. These individuals are key members of the National Consortium on Violence Research, a multi-institutional consortium of individuals from various disciplinary fields including sociology, biology, medicine, law, and political science. It is a true consortium, comprised of 57 scholars in the field of violence research affiliated with 32 institutions across 19 states and 3 countries.
Early Childhood Interventions
Researchers have examined the issue of prevention of youth violence at different stages of life. Richard Tremblay, PhD, of the University of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada, discussed the rationale behind early childhood interventions to prevent later youth violence. After having worked first in prisons with adults, and then later with juvenile delinquents in detention, he found that interventions after the fact were not overly successful. In 1985, Dr. Tremblay turned his attention to young school-aged children and began a longitudinal study of 1037 6-year-old boys from low-income neighborhoods in Montreal. Those boys identified by their kindergarten teachers as being most disruptive were entered into a randomized controlled trial of an intervention aimed at preventing future behavior problems and ultimately delinquency and violence. The 2-year intervention consisted of 3 components: a home-based parent training program based on the model developed by Patterson and colleagues at the Oregon Social Learning Center, a child intervention consisting of social skills training in which the disruptive boys received training within a larger group of prosocial children, and a teacher training component in which the teachers were taught how to best promote prosocial behavior and how to deal with disruptive behavior.
A follow-up study found no difference during the first 2 years after the program. However, by the end of elementary school, significant differences began to emerge. Compared with the control group, the boys in the intervention group were more likely to be well adjusted and half as likely to have serious behavior problems. They were less likely to be friends with boys with problem behaviors, while the boys in the control group primarily associatedwith other disruptive kids. The intervention group also had a lower rate of delinquency, a lower rate of gang involvement, and a decreased likelihood of school failure. The study found, however, that the intervention did not reduce the level of aggressive behavior in these boys. This led Dr. Tremblay and his research team to move even further back in the life cycle and study children beginning at 5 months of age. He found that aggressive behavior was not exhibited much before age 5 months and that it peaked at around 24 months and slowly declined thereafter. Children who had siblings were more likely to be aggressive than those without siblings at home; this was especially true for girls.
Dr. Tremblay concludes that physical aggression is an innate characteristic of children rather than a learned behavior. As Donald Hebb said in 1972, "Neither a human baby nor a chimpanzee needs to learn how to have a temper tantrum." However, what is learned is prosocial behavior and control of aggression. St. Augustine came to the same conclusion during the 4th century.
Continuity of Antisocial and Violent Behavior
Most children learn to control aggression successfully and grow up to be well-functioning members of society. However, 4% to 5% of boys do not learn it and constitute the group of children who later become involved with delinquency and violence and lead lives of crime. Daniel Nagin, PhD,[4] from the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, discussed the risk factors that have been shown to be important predictors for, if not causally related to, the likelihood of continued aggressive behavior. Using the same group of 1037 boys described above, Dr. Nagin and Dr. Tremblay found that by age 17, 4% of the boys continued to have high levels of physical aggression while 28% of the boys who had high aggression in kindergarten showed substantial declines in their aggression.[8] This subgroup of boys, comprising 32% of the initial group, exhibited a variety of behavior problems in middle and high school. In this subgroup, 33% were arrested by age 17, 90% were academically behind by 1 or more grades by age 14, and more than 40% were sexually active by age 13.
The risk factors that are most important in predicting high aggression are shown in the Table below. The accompanying odds ratio reflects the risk for high aggression in the group having the risk factor compared with the group not having the risk factor.