You’re at work, and your boss just found you surfing the net. He (or she) calls you to his office, and orders you to face the wall. He brings out a plank of wood, perhaps 24 inches long, 5 inches wide and half an inch thick, and proceeds to whack you with it, hard – on your back, your arms, your behind, your thighs and your calves. If you resist or complain, you get more.
Then he orders you to address your coworkers and tell them you were not working when you should have been. He might tell you you are forbidden to go eat lunch.
Bizarre, isn’t it? But permitting corporal punishment in school is no different. Twenty states still consider physical punishment by teachers and administrators to be a legal form of discipline.
I remember being paddled a time or two by a nun. It was a mortifying experience. I was spanked because I didn’t admit to speaking when the teacher was out of the room. However, I didn’t admit it because I didn’t do it!! That time, anyhow. I bet many readers will recall being disciplined by paddle, or ruler smacked across your open palms, ears being pulled and twisted; a relative once had his lunch smashed onto his head because he didn’t ‘clean his plate’. In kindergarten.
Studies have shown that in schools which practice physical punishment, students invariably perform worse academically than in schools which prohibit it.
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch have been working together to end the practice everywhere and submitted a joing statement to the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families, which held hearings yesterday that are designed to address the problems which stem from the practice of beating, or ‘paddling’ children in school. This was the first hearing on this topic since 1992. Eighteen years!
From the 4-16-2010 article by Deborah Vagins, legislative counsel for the ACLU:
Hitting any student in school is unacceptable, but our research indicates that corporal punishment is applied at disproportionately high rates to African-American students and students with disabilities. According to the Department of Education, while African-Americans make up 17.1 percent of public school students nationwide, they accounted for 35.6 percent of those who were paddled during the 2006–2007 school year. In addition, although students with disabilities constitute 13.7 percent of all public school students, they make up 18.8 percent of those who are subjected to corporal punishment. In another ACLU/HRW report, Impairing Education, Corporal Punishment of students with disabilities in US public schools, we found that these students may be punished for behavior arising out of their disabilities themselves.
Here is an interactive map showing number of students receiving corporal punishment by state: The map shows both total students and students with disabilities who received physical punishment.
Summary by the ACLU:
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch call on the federal government and US states to prohibit corporal punishment. School districts should replace corporal punishment with effective, positive forms of discipline, so that children’s human rights are protected, and so that every student throughout the United States can maximize his or her academic potential.
Numerous studies have shown that when a good, normally rational person is permitted to hold unreasonable powers over others, s/he will inevitably abuse them. The most spectacular experiment showcasing this unfortunate aspect of human nature is the famous Zimbardo prison experiment. So powerful were the findings that it has its own website.
Let’s get together and support the ACLU and HRW… corporal punishment is truly unconscionable – whether administered to adults or children, and so very easy to address.
There’s been quite a lot of furor arising over the recent federal court decision to strike down the National Day of Prayer as unconstitutional. I’ll leave the AU to explain why it’s the only fair decision. I want to address the core issue here today.
One of the biggest areas of misunderstanding between believers and non-believers is the issue of the Separation of Church and State. Believers often think that it’s atheists trying to outlaw the practice of their faith. Non-theists feel put upon by the incessant references to faith strewn liberally throughout society, and even within some of our laws.
What many don’t seem to understand is that it’s actually not about religion at all. It’s a civil rights issue. The Black Civil Rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther King was not about getting African Americans special priviledges – it was about providing equal rights for all Americans, no matter their color.
Serendipity, by its very nature, is surprising. Sitting at my computer a couple of hours ago, I was having an afternoon ’slump’ and accidentally clicked on a Facebook friend suggestion instead of the link I intended to select … and immediately switched into true ’surf-mode’. I decided to look around, since I was already there on Steve Bremner’s FB page. Looks interesting, seems like a nice person; we share a lot of FB friends. I love looking at photos, so I clicked on some of his, most were images of a fit and athletic man hiking, outside, happy shots.
Then one image really grabbed my attention – a black and white memorial shot of a pretty young girl with the dates 1979-2003 under her smiling face. I looked down and someone had posted information and links about her in the comments area under the photo.
Okay, her name is Rachel Corrie, she’s dead at such a young age – killed it says … so I wonder…
The question – who was this Rachel Corrie and what happened to her?
The answer - Rachel Corrie was a truly special young woman who, from the time she was a child, showed an extraordinary sense of unity with all humankind.
The first of the three links went to a website called Rachel’s Words.The first thing you discover is that clearly, even as a child, Rachel was a gifted writer. She conveyed her emotions beautifully, and her emotions were all tied up in those human conditions that we all care about, we all don’t like – and most of us don’t do much more than donate a few dollars here and there to help remedy.
Rachel, though. . . Rachel put her life on the line for those causes which spoke to her.
The first thing I saw that Rachel wrote was this:
I’m here for other children.
I’m here because I care.
I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.
I’m here because those people are mostly children.
We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.
We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us.
We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.
We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.
My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.
My dream is to give the poor a chance.
My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.
My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.
If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.
If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.
– Rachel Corrie, aged ten, recorded at her school’s Fifth Grade Press Conference on World Hunger
She wrote that at ten, and she never stopped caring and believing change CAN happen if we work for it, right up to the day, right to the moment, she died.
There are emails she wrote, sent home from Palestine, on Rachel’s Words’ website. She wrote passionately, from her heart, and makes you feel as if you were there with her. . . she manages to lovingly reassure her parents that she’s safe while sharing her hopes and fears. Actors Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner edited and assembled Rachel’s words into a powerful one-woman show which debuted in England – is still running in Great Britain, and was scheduled to open in the states when it got ‘postponed’.
Why? Because it is politically incorrect and inflammatory to blame Israelis in this country.
Rachel died trying to stop a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer from the ILLEGAL Israeli demolition of the home of a Palestinian doctor. There she was, standing in front of the house, wearing a bright red jacket and calling out to the driver with the megaphone in her hands; but the bulldozer continued towards her, methodically pushed her back, until it ran over her, crushed her and left her to die.
This was WRONG, so brutally, horribly wrong. That doesn’t mean ALL Israeli’s are ‘bad’, nor, when we hear about Palestinian acts that are ‘wrong’, does it mean all Palestinians are ‘bad’. But it sure doesn’t mean anyone who’s killing their ‘enemy’ is good, either. Real peace will never come if all sides are not held accountable for their actions – but that’s for another story, another day.
The second of the three websites I visited was the full story of her murder. Found here are images as well, of the thin young girl standing on top of piles of dirt, in front of a chain link fence, calling out for peace and understanding, for the driver to let the building stand, for the driver NOT to harm her. Witnesses are certain that he could see her. Yet, the ugliness and hatred of this horrible religious/territorial war overpowered his sanity, and he killed her. Slowly, cruelly, intentionally. He didn’t back off until she disappeared beneath the bulldozer and its blade which he did not raise – instead he allowed it to crush her mercilessly.
Rachel Corrie didn’t die instantly… Rachel Corrie finally died only after being taken to a nearby hospital.
The third site I visited, The US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territory, revisits Rachel’s story, and talks about the work to end this horrible conflict. There are links to many things that you can do to help. In Rachel’s memory, I hope you will try. Rachel died on March 16, 2003, just two weeks ago marked the seventh anniversary of her murder.
Footage from Rachel’s interview conducted by Middle East Broadcasting Company on March 14th, 2003, two days before she was murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces.
On this, the seventh anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death in Rafah, Palestine, the Corrie family and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice call for a renewed commitment to create a better, more peaceful, and just world.
This leaves me with such a heavy heart. Too heavy. Too sad. Too heartbreaking. I hope that Rachel’s brutal and untimely death somehow helps to bring about the peace she worked so very hard to help establish.
Thank you, Rachel Corrie, for being such an inspiration to us all.
