Spare the Rod

A classic G. George Ostrom column from Aug. 22, 1989...

One of the wildest fights I saw in grade school was at Camas Prairie where I attended my first year. It was between the principal and a 17-year-old seventh grader. That’s been a long time so some of the details are hazy, but as I recall, the six-foot student only got in one punch and it was not well delivered. The best right thrown by the super knocked the student over a row of desks and pretty much put an end to the fracas. After that, there was just the business of throwing the kid out in the yard where his horse was tied and a little blood to clean up inside.

Principals at some schools in those days often seemed to be hired on their ability to defend themselves as much as they were for knowledge of readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic. The point was that either you came to school to behave and try to learn something or you got thrown out. When they threw you out at Camas Prairie, they went for distance. There was practically no juvenile delinquency and very few discipline problems in either grade or high schools.

This subject of “corporal” punishment in schools is a hot one over in the legislature right now. The last time I wrote on this subject was in May of 1985 when it was outlawed in New York, not one of your model states for either high education standards or low crime rates.

Now we are dealing with it here in Big Sky Country. Hordes of people descended last week on Helena to testify for SB378 which would outlaw physical disciplinary measures in the public schools. The teachers and administrators seemed to generally be for the bill and the school boards against it.

A school psychologist from Billings, Mark Taylor, said that children who observe corporal punishment at school stop believing it is a safe place and often are so frightened they can’t concentrate on their studies. I personally found exactly the opposite at Camas Prairie. After that big mean kid got clobbered, I did nothing except concentrate on my studies, and it was years before I ever said an insubordinate word to a teacher. I also got good grades.

Contrary to Mark Taylor’s idealistic little theory, I think that soon after the start of each school year, the principal or some highly qualified stand-in should take the biggest, meanest, mouthiest, trouble making kid and physically throw him out the door head first. If one of the classes didn’t happen to have one of those types, they should transfer one in just for this obviously worthwhile demonstration. My experience as a reporter and father of several shows that most young students’ physical fears come from undisciplined bully students, not from the teachers and administrators. If you want to have kids feel safe in school, make good fair rules, enforce them, and get rid of the trouble makers.

Down in Helena, Kathy White told the senators that “corporal punishment is just child abuse made legal.” Here I think Kathy is into a semantic problem. There is quite a difference between giving a misbehaving child a few good swats on the seat of his pants, when compared to knocking him flat or breaking his arms.

The corporal punishment in school issue and the permissiveness in the criminal justice system are all part of the same social movement. They are advanced by idealists who live in a world we would all like to see, but they ignore the reality of unpleasant aberrations which are part of some human personalities. The argument is always the same cliché as was used in Helena last week, “violence begets violence.” All you have to do is carefully study the site of a Nazi concentration camp or any county jail to learn there are some unfortunate souls among us who do not understand, respect, or respond to anything except physical force.

I am sorry Mark. I am sorry Kathy. Any of us would change it if we could.