American scientists condemn corporal punishment

SCIENCE IS weighing-in more heavily than ever before in its condemnation of corporal punishment to children. This week American scientists have publicly criticized the use of corporal in all settings. A study by scientists from the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has concluded that corporal punishment is associated with the cognitive decline in children and is warning parents, teachers, imams and care workers to completely abolish its practice. The results of the study were published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.

The study, one of the largest in recent years, used data from 18,170 children. Focusing on a subgroup of about 12,800 participants aged 5-6 years. The researchers analyzed the effects of corporal punishment on three key areas of executive functioning: inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and working memory.

Inhibitory control is a cognitive process (executive function) that allows an individual to inhibit his or her impulses. It was assessed by teacher reports using the Child Behavior Questionnaire. Cognitive and working memories were tested using specialized tasks. Parents reported whether children were subjected to corporal punishment.

The researchers found no link between spanking/corporal punishment and problems with working memory, a limited-capacity cognitive system that provides temporary storage of information. However, children who were subjected to corporal punishment showed decreased inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. These skills are essential for learning and behaviour regulation.

In addition, this effect occurred regardless of the child’s gender, caregiver ethnicity, or level of parental warmth. This suggests that the negative effects of spanking are similar across demographic groups and family contexts.

There have been countless extensive and expensive studies performed by venerated universities on the effects of corporal punishment to children throughout the decades and not one – NOT ONE – has produced results advocating its use. Yet you have some ‘teachers’ with little more than a HSC certificate to their name beating and damaging children in our schools and madaris... because of their own ignorance, lack of compassion, absence of humanity, and never learned (or were never taught) how to teach properly.

Lost opportunity for education

As a result, there are adults in the world today who may have had the one and only opportunity to receive an education, but were denied. Instead they were mugged and robbed as children by unmasked persons acting in abject ignorance and a sense of pseudo-importance.

Police records contain multiple instances of corporal punishment victims who harboured hatred and resentment towards teachers or imams throughout their lives for causing their humiliation, anguish, pain, and suffering and later took revenge upon them when they became adults. Poetic justice, some might say, but violence is no solution and never right.

If for no other reason than the teachers’ own self-protection, violence should never be taught in schools/madaris The good books tell us: “As you sow, so shall you reap”.

It should stand to common sense and common decency by now in this enlightened world that corporal punishment is wrong and the research by the Old Dominion University underscores that point yet again, as many more have done before.

FOOTNOTE: Filipino boy, Francis Jay Gumikib, a Grade 5 student (14) died days after he was slapped by his teacher on the ear. The teacher reportedly first pulled his hair before slapping him on his head. Days later the boy complained of severe pain to his ear and face. He was taken to hospital where he lapsed into a coma and died.

Don’t be silly enough to think even for a moment, it couldn’t happen here to your child or one known to you. Where there is corporal punishment, pain and suffering are never far behind. The wailing and tears of the victims are the mere tip of the iceberg. The real damage manifests and expands underneath. (SRF)