A young couple in Virginia decides that corporal punishment isn't a necessary tool in the parenthood toolkit.
The Washington Post has a thought-provoking article by Peter Jamison about a young Virginia couple, both of whom were home schooled by their parents, electing to send their own children to public school. The couple was raised in a brand of fundamentalist Christianity that seems pretty traditional (I hesitate to use the word "extreme", but it may fit in some ways), even among home schoolers. The article describes the couples' gradual and painful journey to deciding that public schools could be a good option for their children.
Among the home schooling practices promoted within their particular brand of home schooling Christianity is parents inflicting corporal punishment on their children:
The use of the “rod” — interpreted by different people as a wooden spoon, dowel, belt, rubber hose or other implement — was a common practice among the conservative Christian home-schoolers Aaron and Christina knew, and one they had both experienced regularly in their own families...
[Aaron] knew that the term parents in the movement casually used for discipline, “spankings,” did not capture the childhood terror of being struck several times a week — sometimes more, sometimes less — with what he describes as a shortened broomstick for disobeying commands or failing to pay attention to his schoolwork.
The home schooling handbook used by this particular group gives a variety of Bible verses justifying the use of the disciplinary rod.
The promotion of corporal punishment as a normal and expected approach to parenting is one of the chief reasons that Aaron and Christina parted ways with the group, and began a journey which eventually led them to public schools.
I wasn't home schooled. But I was spanked as a young kid. To be sure, my parents didn't use a rubber hose(!) My mom slapped us smartly on the heinie with her bare hand. My dad did, too, although occasionally he used a hairbrush or a book. But I don't think he did it very hard. And I don't think either of them laid a disciplinary hand on my by the time I reached five years old.
(On the other hand, the middle school I attended, a public school in a small town, really did whack the kids, hard. I got in trouble once. I was told to reach down and touch my toes. The teacher, who also was the wrestling coach, wielded an inch-thick wooden paddle with holes drilled in it to cut down on wind resistance. It really hurt!)
I don't consider my parents to have been abusive. I am sure they were doing to us what their own parents did to them. And I assumed, probably at least partially rightly, that every other kid up and down the block was getting the same discipline meted out to them, too.
My parents each had also attended 12 years of Catholic schooling. To hear them tell it, the religious sisters who taught Catholic schools were regular dolers of corporal punishment: thwacking kids on the wrists or hands with rulers, throwing erasers at them, paddling them, and so on. According to my dad, one of his classmates got in trouble once for running around the classroom with his arms outstretched, as though he was a fighter plane (this was in the WWII era). As punishment, the teacher made him keep his arms outstretched for the rest of the morning. That's pretty ingenious, in a cruel, abusive sort of way.
We didn't spank our own kids. My wife and I discussed it briefly when we were young marrieds. We both agreed it wasn't necessary, and we didn't approve of it. I can't claim my kids are perfect, but on the whole, they've turned out at least as well as me as my siblings.
What was your experience with corporal punishment as a child? Where do you stand now?
I read that article in the Washington Post. It struck me that that group pretty much behaved like a cult and controlled everyone through fear. I'm glad the family was able to pretty much get out of it, and that even the grandparents were able to see that the kids were okay going to public school.
ReplyDeleteI don't ever remember getting spanked by my dad. He was an only child. My grandma said grandpa never spanked him. "Grandpa Martin" died when I was a toddler, I have only very hazy memories of him. He was born and raised in Denmark. Grandma said she thought the culture there was different, that they didn't use corporal punishment on children much. Occasionally as a preschooler I got smacked on the behind by my mom if I was too mouthy or disobedient, but not often. I went to Catholic grade school but I was never spanked at school, or even rapped on the knuckles with a ruler.
"It struck me that that group pretty much behaved like a cult and controlled everyone through fear."
DeleteYes - fear, and isolation.
There are Catholic home schoolers. The few I have met don't strike me as far "out there" as the group described in the article. But it seems to me that rejection of the larger society is part and parcel of home schooling - people don't home school unless they think there is something irredeemable about the public schools and what they stand for.
And even within the smaller universe of Catholic culture and society, Catholic home schoolers often are engaging in rejection. I've never lived in a place that didn't have at least a Catholic elementary school in the town as an alternative to public schools. Catholic home schoolers are rejecting both the public schools and the Catholic schools. And the Catholic home schooling families I have known have been drawn to the Latin mass parishes as well; I see that decision as a further rejection, of mainstream Catholic worship and community. So these families are consciously separating themselves from the mainstream. Or so it seems to me.
To be sure: the entire Catholic school structure, as an alternative structure to public school systems, necessarily entails a rejection of the public schools. There were historical reasons for the church in the US deciding to set up an alternative system: in the 19th century, public schools were more overtly religious than they are now, and tended to be under the social control of the so-called mainline denominations, which themselves could be considerably more overtly anti-Catholic than is the case now. Of course, public schools have changed dramatically since then. It's good for Catholic schools to continue to re-examine their mission - their reason for continuing to exist. In a number of the industrial towns in which I lived when I was younger, the public schools were not very good; the Catholic schools had much better academic outcomes, and also weren't plagued as much by some of the social problems - violence, gangs, drugs and so on. Around here, the public schools do a very good job, so the Catholic schools have to position themselves as carriers of Catholic identity and Catholic morality. That, and the tuition expense, mean that the families who send their kids to Catholic schools tend toward the well-off and conservative.
The Catholic schools should remember the reasons they were founded, which included being taught Protestant, anti- Catholic, religion and mandated use of a Protestant translation of the Bible - in public schools. The Catholics should definitely NOT be seeking to use tax money for their schools or any other religious school. They need to remember that many evangelical schools still teach that Catholicism is the church of the anti- Christ.
DeleteI know why my son and daughter in law send their kids to Catholic school. For one thing they are active members of their parish. But another reason is that they live in a not-great part of town, and the public school they would go to has a problem with violence. No kids should have to put up with physical danger. I don't think it's racial prejudice because the Catholic school has the same percent of racial mix as the rest of the town. They do make scholarships available to families who can't pay full tuition. The governor just signed off on a tax credit bill for contributions to private school scholarship funds. I used to think that was a bad idea, but if it helps some kids get out of a school where they're not safe, I don't see that it's wrong.
DeleteI know I mention this every time we discuss Catholic schools: Andrew Greeley believed, based on his study of social survey data in the 1960s and 70s, that Catholic schools were the social "glue" that made Catholic parishes tight-knit communities. They reinforced the inter-family bonds of Catholic parish membership. He was very critical of the bishops of that era, who were disinvesting in Catholic schools.
DeleteIt seems to me that Catholic home schoolers don't get "glued" this way. They get "glued" to one another as a sort of set-apart group.
Back in the 90s there was a controversy at our parish about the parish’s treatment of the public school families- and the kids especially- as second class members of the parish.
DeleteJim, I think Greeley was on to something there. There was a bishop in my home diocese in the 70s who didn't think Catholic schools were a priority. Well he came from Oklahoma where they don't have many Catholics in the first place, and I'm sure Catholic schools weren't a priority. Anyway he closed a bunch of schools in the Grand Island Diocese. Guess what, you close them, they don't come back. One of the areas they closed them was where they were getting a lot of vocations. That doesn't come back either.
DeleteRecently our archdiocese has gone through some closures because they basically don't have a choice. There was one rural Catholic high school about 40 miles from where we live where the latest graduating class was five students. The archdiocese pulled the plug. Unfortunately it stirred up a hornets nest.
Delete"The governor just signed off on a tax credit bill for contributions to private school scholarship funds. I used to think that was a bad idea, but if it helps some kids get out of a school where they're not safe, I don't see that it's wrong."
DeleteNot wrong at all. All else being equal, there is no moral imperative to send our children to government schools. Nor - all else being equal - is there any ethical or moral reason that a government body should subsidize only one variety of schools.
FWIW - my India co-workers have free public schools available to them, but they all choose to pay tuition to send their children to private schools because the education is so much better. They do something similar with healthcare: even though the government provides inexpensive hospital services, they all pay more to have their family members treated in private hospitals, because the health care outcomes are better. During COVID, they all viewed the government-run hospitals as death traps.
I used to have a boss who was Indian. What he said correlates with what you said. It's a two tier system. I don't think it's what we want here, for either health or education (some would say we already have one, but not like that). I'm for people being able to choose. But if the public version is so bad that anyone who can opts out of it, it's not really a choice.
Delete" It's a two tier system. I don't think it's what we want here"
DeleteRight. Whereas in the US, we have "have" and "have-not" tiers, even within 'free' public school systems. The suburban schools around here, on the whole, are pretty good - some are outstanding. There is no "educational advantage" to choosing a Catholic school around here; frankly, the Catholic schools around here probably aren't as good in many ways as the well-funded public schools. But 25 miles away from here, in the same metropolitan area, the Chicago Public Schools have many schools which provide below-average outcomes. Catholic schools are an important alternative. In Illinois, local schools are funded by local property taxes, which surely drives some of the disparities from one school district to another.
I don't think a little competition hurts anything. It may keep both public and private systems on their toes a bit.
DeleteAs long as tax money isn’t diverted to religious schools.
Delete"As long as tax money isn’t diverted to religious schools."
DeleteBecause...?
Seapation if church and state?
DeleteI don't believe that government support for a religious education school which meets all of the government's own educational standards is a threat to the separation of church and state.
DeleteThe danger of intermixing church and state is the danger that the state establishes a state religion. As the state already funds non-religious schools, which are an option for any and all families, it can't really be argued that the state also funding Catholic, Lutheran, Evangelical and Jewish schools constitutes the government establishing those religions.
The problem, Jim, isn’t academic standards. The problem is that tax money meant to support free, public schools will be given to private schools whose stated mission is indoctrination of specific religious ideas, whether they are Christians, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi or any other religion. I also do not think it right that the tax money of the LGBTQ etc citizens should be used to support schools that teach that they are either innately sinful (evangelical) or “ innately disordered” ( Catholic), schools which exempt themselves from the civil rights laws so that they can fire or refuse to hire gay employees who don’t choose to remain in the closet. I also don’t want my money used to teach children that women are subject to men according to God’s will, that they are second-class - in the Catholic Church they are denied a sacrament. I don’t want my tax money used in schools that teach that the earth is only 6000 years old, that teach creationism, etc., I also don’t want tax money that is desperately needed by public schools who have to teach ALL students, who have special needs, who can’t pick and choose their students, to be used by religious schools who do pick and choose their student bodies, who don’t accommodate kids with disabilities, or kids with behavior problems, or kids with two moms or two dads. If the Catholics can’t figure out how to keep their schools open without drinking from the public trough, then they should close. If they want to help inner city kids, then cough up more scholarship money. But don’t try to use other people’s money to support religious views that aren’t shared by the majority of citizens.
DeletePretty much like Katherine. I remember being struck on the behind very occasionally and only one strike was enough for me to get the message. Never in school. I was shaken once in eighth grade but that was my only crazy nun and I was big enough to take it.
ReplyDeleteMy Aunt Genevieve was a beater. She was very physical with her daughters and would yank their hair. Interesting because she was probably the most willful of her siblings. She pretty much copied the pattern of HER mother. My mother did not, thankfully.
Stanley - your observation of your aunt rings true to me: I think parents of young children tend to replicate how they were treated when they were young. I suppose that, in many cases, parents aren't being particularly thoughtful about it; they are reacting intuitively in the midst of stressful situations.
DeleteApparently there is a documentary out now about the Duggar family and the cult they were part of.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2023/05/30/duggar-family-documentary-shiny-happy-people-secrets-revealed/70258788007/
Always though the Duggars were a hot mess.
Delete"though" should be thought.
DeleteIf I had a kid today, I might home school it after seeing what schools do. No cursive. Math teaching fads. Social programming. One size fits all. Low expectations and demands. Learning how to use every computer except the one between their ears. My father gave me "War and Peace" and a geometry book when I was ten. That "home schooling" had quite an impact.
ReplyDelete"Math teaching fads"; how many iterations of new math have we gone through since the 60s? At least three or four. They teach multiplication tables and long division now, but don't do much drill or repetition. It's not going to stay in the memory banks, but I guess they feel it doesn't have to, because everyone's always going to have a smart phone.
DeleteI still do arithmetic in my head or on paper. I'm no savant but I use some tricks I came up with to stretch my abilities. It's the tricks that are fun. I would never have come up with the tricks if I'd done everything on a calculator. A calculator is a machine. But arithmetic in a human mind is a living thing that can grow.
DeleteI knew a guy Jim Heater at work who could multiply two four digit numbers in his head. One of our technicians Dominic said, "Heat cheats. He uses logarithms". I so loved working in that place.
Reminds me of the joke where Noah told the animals in the ark to go forth and multiply. Two snakes said, as they were leaving, "Can't. We're adders. We have to use a log table."
DeleteAh. The good old log tables. A slide rule on paper pages. It's been oh so long. I'm nostalgic for things most people never heard of.
DeleteThe middle school in my area was built during the open school fad. No inner walls. No separate classrooms. No windows. I don't know if they've installed inner walls since. I'll have to ask around.
ReplyDeleteI'm skeptical of Church-state entanglement, too. But I rather like the idea of diverse education, too. If one school system adopts goofy fad theory 3,257, perhaps the children in the other system will be spared if it isn't installed there.
My Lord. Right now children are being exposed to the greatest mass neurological/sociological experiment of all time, the cell phone to brain interface. I don't think it's working out.
Scares the protoplasm out of me.
I was spanked only once. Evidently, I had a temper tantrum outside of Murphy's 5 & 10; my mother threatened and then spanked me when we got home. Later on in life she reminded me of this incident as evidence that she had solved the problem of my misbehaving in public.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I would even have remembered the incident unless she had. All my psychologist's training says that one trial learning, especially learning to suppress certain behaviors is highly unlikely.
If my mother had found a way to do that she could have made a fortune.
I suspect it just was an incident at the end of a phase of my growing up, e.g. the terrible two's.