With the public safety budget stretched thin, our state needs to get creative about ways to save money.
Some school administrators, mainly in the Midwest and the South, are apparently still able to legally beat their students. However, while states may legally allow the beatings, individual school districts may adopt bans on the practice. I say kids these days are out of hand, and school administrators in our state should be able to spank these kids.
Kids will benefit because it will correct negative behavior as well as toughen them up. Honestly, I don’t even feel it is the school’s job to administer such punishment. However, if the parents will not do it, then someone needs to.
I charge that parents and schools are letting kids become soft, as well as carefree. This carefree outlook eventually festers and develops into what has been coined in the media as “affluenza.” Affluenza is a disease that strikes primarily affluent suburban kids who have little to no parental oversight. These out-of-control young adults drink, drive and party as if they were adults, generally doing what they please.
They do what they please because their parents are soft on them. My mother had a firm hand. Now, I would not go so far as to say that my mother beat me as a child, but if I egged the neighbor’s car—and I did—that was worth a paddling. You can probably guess how many times I egged the neighbor’s car after this administering of corporal punishment.
It’s a good thing I got my act together at a young age. It was a blessing, because a 10-year-old egging a car is a lot different than a 17 or 18-year-old high school student egging a car.
In case you didn’t know, removing eggs from the side of a house or car can be a very expensive operation, and it can also lead to a criminal record. An example of this occurred recently, with Justin Bieber potentially facing felony vandalism charges for egging a mansion neighboring his own.
Let’s pretend corporal punishment is legal. Next, we will pretend some nearly grown child afflicted with affluenza drinks and drives directly into a school bus full of second graders. Luckily, no one is seriously injured…this time. The judge says the culprit has the option of going to jail, where they will probably end up getting the crap kicked out of them anyway, or they can take 10 lashes from a whip.
Sure, the 10 lashes will hurt like the dickens. However, I would wager that anytime in the future the culprit begins to think about doing something foolish, they will remember how awful it was to be whipped mercilessly, all at a limited cost to John and Jane Q taxpayer.
This whipping would save taxpayers like you and me costs associated with additional jail cells, parole officers and a bogged-down judicial system. The whipping would also save the criminal from the psychological abuse of living in a cell like some kind of caged animal.
Naturally, not everyone agrees with corporal punishment. The American Psychological Association is against it. I am not persuaded by their argument that it causes psychological damage, especially since I feel that kids these days need to get tough. Which is worse psychologically for a child: to get whipped at a young age and mentally know that they can take it? Or for a child to grow up in a sheltered environment, and become traumatized the first time they experience violence from peers in their high school or from aggressive street folks inhabiting the real world?
I ask you to think back to 1999. One of the greatest movies of all time was released in this year. Of course I am talking about Detroit Rock City. If you haven’t seen this movie then you need to watch it at your earliest convenience. If you have already seen it, you will remember the scene where Trip (James DeBello) begs for mercy. “Please sir, don’t kick my ass!” he cries. “I’ll do anything to get out of a beating!”
Doesn’t this sound suspiciously similar to a plea from a criminal addressing a judge who has sentenced them to a whipping? Trip, or a first time offender, would hopefully be scared straight after the first beating. Ideally they would be so scared that they become a productive member of society.