Government

State Worried That Talking About Race Harms Kids Brings Back Beating Children In School

'Giving teachers guns wasn’t enough, they’ll have belts too!' - Missouri parents, apparently

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angry stress ball

If you don’t raise your hand, I’ll raise mine!

I thought it was simple enough when people were trying to bring prayer back to schools. Would that be a blatant violation of what the Establishment Clauses and Freedom of Speech used to represent? Yes, but at the end of the day, it’s not like your teachers were hitting you for not falling in line. Sure, some states in our union are actively banning books to prevent students from thinking freely, but the notion that beating children would be allowed in 2022 is a little too outrageous for this day and age. Right?

A school district in Missouri announced it will reinstate spanking this school year – but with a parental caveat.

Parents were recently notified of a policy approved in June by the school board to once again allow spanking in school – but only as a last resort and with written permission from parents.

…

Each family will be asked to opt in or out.

You might think, “Okay, so what? The schools have parental consent. What’s the harm?”

We are living in a post-Bremerton America. I don’t even feel like it’s cynical to predict that we’re like six months tops from a teacher who decides to beat a student without their parent’s permission. If the kid’s parents have enough money or get picked up by the ACLU, they’ll sue the school. If the lower courts don’t just outright side with the school, it’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court. You know why? Because the teacher is gonna make some BS argument that not allowing teachers to beat students, even without parental consent, violates their religious freedom. There’s probably an Alito draft somewhere already citing corporal punishment being a longstanding American tradition before it gets to the real reason why state actors beating children is going to be treated like a religious liberty issue — Proverbs 13:24. Do you really think conservative candidates who’ve ran on law-and-order campaigns for decades are gonna miss on the opportunity to run on Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child?

Advocates of teachers beating kids might call this fearmongering. “First, it wouldn’t be that egregious. The article you’re citing says that hitting would be done with a paddle and allow for at most three strikes. Second, corporal punishment is already allowed in 19 states, what could go wrong?” Let’s not be naïve here — teachers would do a lot more than paddling given the opportunity.

Let’s look at Colorado:

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Here’s Kansas:

Here’s Kentucky:

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What’s the over/under on  some teacher hitting a kid for not doing their homework, a kid defends themselves, and the teacher “fears for their life”? Don’t hide behind the “nobody could have seen this happening” when the thoughts and prayers are inevitably sent out. You were warned years in advance.

The cherry on the top of it all? The science says beating children is at best ineffective in the long-term and at worst it makes them more violent.

The American Academy of Pediatrics strengthened its advice against corporal punishment in update guidelines, saying it makes kids more aggressive and raises the risk of mental health issues.

“Experiencing corporal punishment makes it more, not less, likely that children will be defiant and aggressive in the future,” the group says in its new guidelines to pediatricians.

“There’s no benefit to spanking,” said Dr. Robert Sege of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, who helped write the guidelines.

…

“Within a few minutes, children are often back to their original behavior. It certainly doesn’t teach children self-regulation,” Sege told NBC News.

This gets even worse when you think about the chilling effects the reinstatement of beating will have on children exercising their rights. Remember, we’re in a post-Bremerton world here. If you thought the pressure of being invited to pray at the 50-yard line with your coach was too much, imagine knowing that your coach COULD ALSO BEAT YOU. States like Florida (which already allows for beatings, by the way) are already facing clear teacher shortages so dramatic that they’re letting unqualified people mold the state’s young minds. Don’t be too surprised when there’s an uptick of Catholic nuns trying to teach Missouri kids algebra. Your state could be next.

Missouri School District Reinstates Spanking As Punishment: ‘We’ve Had People Actually Thank Us’ [USA Today]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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