The Hand That Swings the Paddle Rules the World

An article in today's New York Times will, perhaps, bring you equal parts of insight and fear. The title "When Is Spanking Child Abuse?" seems reasonable enough at first glance. There certainly is such a thing as child abuse. Whoever practices physical abuse of children is someone who spanks. What such a person would term "spanking" quite obviously could be child abuse. A reasonable discussion along the lines of "When Is Spanking Child Abuse?" could be profitable to everyone who should participate.

This, my friends, is not that discussion. For Lisa Belkin's unmistakeable underlying presumption in writing the article is that most of her readers will meet the question "When Is Spanking Child Abuse?" with the answer "Always!" (although the comment stream didn't bear that out).

Here's the insight that we all might gain from her article: How far discourse on this topic has moved in such a brief time:

1. A century ago, corporal punishment was a presumptive part of parenting.
2. During the twentieth century, American culture became surprisingly aware of a subculture of non-spanking people.
3. Through the influence of people like Benjamin Spock (not a Vulcan, BTW!), serious debate took place over the propriety of spanking children.
4. Spanking came to official and vehement disfavor among leadership in the medical, psychiatric, and social work fields.
5. Now, as this article makes clear, in places like New York, this article takes a tone of surprising awareness that people somewhere still spank.

Consider these quotations:

Spanking…has never really gone away in many parts… [This quotation presumes a readership that would have assumed spanking to have been a thing of the past!]

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Corporal punishment in school is still legal in 21 states. [Yikes! Surely you jest!]

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Despite the rise of the timeout and other nonphysical forms of punishment, most American parents hit, pinch, shake, or otherwise lay violent hands [Gasp!] on their youngsters: 63 percent of parents physically discipline their 1-to 2-year-olds, and 85 percent of adolescents have been physically punished by their parents.

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While the United Nations has set a target date of 2009 to end corporal punishment by parents, and while 23 countries have already banned hitting kids, the United States is not one of them.

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Isn’t all hitting child abuse?

The article features some creative use of statistics. The last time I checked, one third amounts to a whole lot less than half, but Belkin analyzes a statistic that "over a third" of spankers escalate to child abuse. Now, that's a horrible statistic, if it is true. But it does not amount to the claim that spanking "usually escalates" to child abuse. Usually? Hmmm.

It's alarming enough that a regular columnist for a paper as influential as the Old Gray Lady holds these views. More disturbing is the fact that an action by a father that left no one injured and no one aggrieved has resulted in a godly father standing before the bar of judgment. It could be me just as easily as it could be him. That scares me a bit.

It also scares me a bit to think that discipline of children is so absent New York City that a parenting columnist for the Times would find the concept so Neanderthal. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and if things keep going as they are foolishness will increasingly be the hallmark of our society. And then, sooner than we expect, the United States of America will fall to some better, stronger race of people who love their children enough not to let them turn into the worst version of themselves.

Shouldn't They Have Had to Write "I Will Eat Mor Chikin"?

Fox News is reporting that prominent Christian businessman and Chick-Fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy has (in my opinion, not Fox's) exhibited Christian mercy and grace in his dealings with two teenaged girls who vandalized the 87-year-old chicken magnate's Florida home.

Rather than press charges—an action that Cathy feared would "leave [the girls] with a criminal record"—Cathy has arranged for the girls to have to write 1,000 times "I will not vandalize other people's property," to read a "good book," and to forego television and video games for a length of time unspecified in the story.

I like it. I really like it.

Why We Homeschool

It hasn't really become that much of an issue yet, because Jim is just four years old. Nevertheless, we've not hidden it from anyone in church or family that we do not intend to send Jim packing off to any Kindergarten (public or private) when the time comes. We get all the usual questions. We do not necessarily give all of the usual answers. Here's a quick rundown of my position (which is not necessarily always the same as Tracy's view) on these questions:

1. Everybody home schools and everybody schools out of the home—the question is, when do you switch from one to the other. People do not think it unusual for kids to learn to walk and talk at home from Mom and Dad. At the other end of the spectrum, people don't usually homeschool college. The educational pattern for raising children is to begin their education at home and then to transition them to studies outside the home at some point. The whole debate is over the time of transition.
2. Our experience suggests to us that five or six is too young to make the transition. Tracy has an M.S.E. (Master of Science in Education). She has taught in public schools. At one job, she participated in a teaching method called "looping." To state it simply, she kept the same classroom of kids for two years. Year one, she taught them first grade. Year two, she taught them second grade. For first grade, the class only did somewhat above average (attributable to the fact that Tracy is an exceptional teacher, IMHO). For second grade, the kids really took off and the whole class performed far above expectations. We believe that early elementary learning is as much (or more) about relationship as it is about skill. We believe that the kids blossomed so well in the second year because they started the year with a relationship already in place with the teacher. As we age, I think that the dependence upon relationship for learning diminishes (but never goes away) while the dependence upon skill and diligence (of both teacher and student) increases. What does Tracy's looping experience have to do with homeschooling? Quite simply, we already have a strong relationship with our children. We believe that, at the beginning of their education, they will never have any relationship more conducive to learning than the relationship with their parents.
3. I'm committed to the education of my kids, not to homeschooling. At the very first moment that I conclude that they will get a better education in a public school, we'll be there to sign up the very next day. If we had one of several specific special-needs situations, I would do precisely that, probably. Different public schools have different strengths and weaknesses (as do private schools and homeschool environments). We're going to evaluate it all with one and only one criterion in mind—what is the best thing for our children? I will not sacrifice my children upon the altar of possible ramifications within the church. I am neither a part of any movement to keep everyone in government schools nor a part of any movement to drive everyone out. For me, it is not a career decision or a political decision; it is a parenting decision. We will discharge the responsibility given us by God to raise these children, and we will seek to do it with excellence. At this point, we can see no more excellent way than for us to educate our children ourselves. We have not worked out with precision the age (stage) at which we will make the transition to out-of-the-home schooling. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. We're very open to hybrid models like University-Model Schooling as a bridge from one model to the other. If I am ever a part of starting a school, it will probably follow the university model. But the point is that we plan to be open and flexible, responding to the educational needs of our child.
4. I do not believe that attending a government school would make a drug-using, boozing, sleeping-around, baby-aborting, reprobate, parent-sassing, nose-piercing, Democrat-voting fiend out of my child. If you believe the gospel and if you'll consider the facts of history, I don't think you'll believe that, either. According to the gospel, people become this sort of thing because they are sinful human beings. Remember...Eve...a serpent...a big, red, shiny apple? My kids have a sinful nature, and I'm going to have to face up to that, no matter how much it scares the living daylights out of me (and believe me, it does). As for the case from history, compulsory universal public education is only around a century old. Guess how long we've had drug-using, boozing, sleeping-around, baby-aborting, reprobate, parent-sassing, nose-piercing, Democrat-voting fiends? A whole lot longer. Public education is not the cause here. I don't think public education is helping much—I acknowledge that many of the problems highlighted by my brethren who are pursuing other alternatives for education are indeed serious and real problems. But let us all be honest and concede that we are sinful parents, too. We are quite capable of making something horrible of our children all by ourselves.
5. For precisely the same reasons, neither can I believe for one moment that my children, unless they get themselves into a public school from the moment of their third birthday, will become drooling, zit-faced, tongue-tied, crosseyed, Caspar-Milquetoast, misanthropic wallflowers. If public schooling is necessary for successful socialization, then tell me, just how did humanity survive for our several millennia before public schooling? Hmmm??? At least for some kids (school-shooting perpetrators, anyone?), public schools seem quite adept at anti-socializing them. On the other hand, some kids attend public schools and wind up with great social skills. Here's a thought—maybe there are at least one or two other factors that affect a matter as complex as socialization?

The ultimate baseline assumption for all of my opinions on this matter is as follows: Raising my children is my responsibility. That responsibility includes, among other things, providing for their education. Although I will gladly seek help and employ resources, I will not (even if and when they go outside the home for schooling) ever give away my authority and responsibility in that area to anyone else.