Maybe corporal punishment would keep pupils in check
THIS is a very interesting article by Angalika Poulsen (The Star, May 4).
My experience with the social sciences is researchers choose a subject they want to research and they formulate a hypothesis that seeks to validate their beliefs in a particular subject.
Curiously, the writer confirms this by coming up with the phrase: “Spare the rod and not spoil the child”.
We know that the old adage says: “Spare the rod and spoil the child”.
How many of us, subjected to some form of corporal punishment during our school days or some spanking at home, have grown up to be violent adults? Born and raised under those circumstances, South Africa can boast of a host of many professionals, qualified in a diversity of fields of competence, devoid of any inclination to violence – which nullifies the belief you can successfully spare the rod and not spoil the child.
It might also help if researchers could explain to us why a baby, angry at an adult’s behaviour, would pinch them hard, while watching their reaction to the pain which would show on their face? Is this not a form of innate violence – which can’t be claimed as having been learnt from adult behaviour?
Anger cannot be learnt, it is a natural reaction to some form of provocation. The difference is that our environment, as we grow up, will determine how we react to it. That does not explain why the classroom has now become so hostile to teachers, who are only there to work – and pupils feel free to defy them because there is no useful tool teachers can use to enforce compliance.