Even as Missouri lawmakers have been busily working to ensure that public school children get whitewashed versions of American history in class and girded reading choices in school libraries — all based on fabricated culture-war controversies — they remain uninterested in addressing an actual scourge that threatens those kids: corporal punishment in public schools.
As was humiliatingly highlighted in a Washington Post analysis last week, Missouri is one of fewer than 20 states that still allow this barbaric practice. Far from being an unintended statutory oversight, it’s the deliberate policy of the state. This is clear because, just last year, a new Missouri state law went into effect requiring permission slips from parents before schools can physically inflict pain upon their children.
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We’re sorry, but what century is this?
Parental permission slips don’t make this OK. Missouri lawmakers should, as soon as possible, take a break from trying to protect school kids from knowledge, and finally protect them from what is, in the end, tax-funded child abuse.
The “spare the rod, spoil the child” trope is, according to most psychologists today, bunk.
“Corporal punishment,” notes the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “signals to the child that a way to settle interpersonal conflicts is to use physical force and inflict pain.” Multiple studies have shown that corporal punishment of children is not only ineffective in addressing antisocial behavior beyond the immediate moment, but that it can lead to long-term behavioral and mental health problems.
Of course, how parents choose to discipline their own children in the home is one thing — though it’s worth noting that even a quick disciplinary smack administered by a parent against a child would, if inflicted upon that parent by another adult, be actionable in both civil and criminal court. Kids don’t have the same virtually ironclad legal protection that adults do when it comes to being intentionally subjected to pain.
The socially complicated issue of parental discipline at home aside, it’s astonishing that in the 2020s, we’re still debating the notion that physical violence against a child by an educator is ever acceptable.
It’s not like there aren’t other disciplinary options. Everything from detention to expulsion is available to deal with behavioral problems by students.
To the credit of some Missouri legislators, they have tried, repeatedly, over the years to outlaw corporal punishment in public schools. But the closest they got was last year’s measure requiring a parental signature before imposing the paddle. Which almost qualifies as dark humor.
Think about it: I hereby grant the school district permission to beat my kid …
What about public-school parents who believe that corporal punishment is intrinsically abusive? Even if their own kids aren’t in danger, thanks to the permission-slip rule, those parents (and all other taxpayers in the state) are still funding each of those paddle smacks via taxes used for education.
Why should those who don’t think that hitting children should be part of the state’s educational experience be paying (literally) to help make it happen?
Defenders of the current statute point out that, in practice, corporal punishment reportedly happens very rarely in Missouri schools. This is irrelevant. We’re talking here about a specific state statute — which, like all state statutes, contributes to the narrative of what a state stands for.
Missouri, it seems, stands for hitting kids.
It’s outlandish that the closest the Legislature has yet come to confronting this tax-funded child abuse is to specify the circumstances under which it can legally happen. Every constituent should remember that the next time one of these legislators warns about the dangers of library books or history curriculum.
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