Punishment(s)

This is from 7/08

Yesterday I was with mom coming back from Barnes Crossing Mall in Tupelo. She was listening to this talk radio station. I wasn't really paying attention to the radio, I was thinking how nice it would be if I was laying in my bed right at that moment. But I started paying attention when she started shaking her head and mumbling in her "I hate people like this" voice. We had just got on the highway in front of the mall when she turned the radio down and got her phone out. She called the station to talk to a guest on the radio show. I turned the radio back up a little so I could hear what was going on. The guest was some woman talking about alternatives to corporal punishment. She was really throwing out alot of "facts" and "statistics", but without explaining any of them. And every time the lady said beating instead of paddling/whipping/whatever, my mom would mumble more and shake her head harder. She said that it was a scientific fact that CP was harmful to children's learning, and Psychiatrist and Pediatricians were against CP. She went so far as to practically say that the whole scientific community believed CP was harmful to child development and is detrimental to learning. And now she was on the radio show to promote her beliefs with a picket outside of the capital building in a couple of weeks. She wants to as many people as she can but she was really hoping that she could get alot of kids to show up for the picket because they were the ones with the most to gain or lose. I knew there was going to be a throw down over the radio and I wasn't gonna miss it. Matter of fact, I had a front row seat to the show. LOL.
It didn't take long for them to get mom on the air. My mom told them that she was a professor of English and Political Science at a university. She no longer taught Political Science but was still teaching English at a local community college. And she told them that she did not agree with what their guest was saying on the air and would like to discuss it with her. So I think they probably bypassed the other callers so my mom could get on the air to argue with her. I don't think the guys that host the show liked the guest, her attitude, or what she was saying (she was in her early 20's and was on a crusade to rid the world of corporal punishment in schools and private homes). And my mom really hates people that throw out statistics as proof because she says that there are any number of ways to shade them to (make them) fit a certain belief or stance.
Anyway my mom right off the bat, told the lady that she was making judgements on something that she probably had very little first hand knowledge of. The lady then said that she had done extensive studies on the subject and that it's a fact that CP is a detriment in the school setting. She said that comparing schools that have CP to schools without CP, students that go to schools without CP have a higher IQ, significant higher graduation rate, and more college education. So my mom countered with a few questions:

1. Who did these studies?
2. Was this a study of prep schools, military schools, religious schools, performing arts schools, etc?
3. Was it a study of public schools?
4. Was it a combination of both (comparing private schools without CP to public schools with Cp)?

The lady said that there was alot of studies on her web site, which I don't remember what the name is. But she never would say who they were done by. The types of schools that were studied, she didn't know. But she said that it wouldn't matter because children are still just children. My mom told her that she was in for a big surprise because there is no typical person and especially there is not a typical child. And the schools do matter because in a private school, the children want to be there are at least their parents want them to be there. They pay a tuition to go to those private schools and for the most part, won't jeopardize it by bad acts. The corporal punishment in those schools is being thrown out of those schools. In a public school, it's not the same. It's extremely hard to dismiss a student from a public school and the students know it. Public schools without CP, have no way to control the students that want to cause trouble. That is why you see police officers patrolling the halls of some public schools where you don't see that at private schools. She was still talking to the lady on the radio when she said that "you keep referring CP to beatings. I'm sorry if you were beaten when you were a child but true CP is not beatings. It is a punishment for an offence perpetrated by a student. Just like in real life, there are punishments for certain behaviours. And since schools are a time for learning, why not learn that lesson as well as math, English, History, and Biology. Maybe that is what is wrong with our society now. We have a whole generation of children that are taught that there is no punishment for bad behaviour. Then they become adults and suddenly they are in trouble with the law because they never learned that important lesson. My mom told her that none of her children have been paddled at school without her knowledge, and I can say that is true. Every time me and/or my sibs got into trouble the school called my mom or dad. They came to the school to here about what happened. If we deserved the punishment, we got it with my parents blessings. Then we probably got it again when we got home. The thing is, we knew what we had done, we knew what the possible consequences were, and we had no one to blame but ourselves. I never saw it as a beating. I never saw it as an assault. I knew it was punishment for something that I had done that was possibly very dangerous but at least disruptive and disrespectful to my teachers and other classmates. My parents never punished me for anything without first I knew and understood the reason for the punishment. My mom told her that a beating was for the most part an anger driven act of violence, an act of revenge, or an act of a sociopath. A paddling is none of those. It's a small measure of punishment compared to adults who go thru childhood without any measure of punishment and then have to face a world that will punish you to the extreme. Then mom told the lady that it was time to take back our public schools. It was time to teach and without some form of authority, punishment, and safety there is no way this can happen. We will just have the same or worse public schools.

She then told the woman that she knows that there are cases where punishments were turned into something that wasn't punishment. But just like everything else in life, there are people that will abuse situations. Then she told the lady that she was doing the same thing. She was abusing the listeners of this show to gain notoriety. She was giving false statistics, using double talk, and fudged facts to get people visit her web site. And the reason she thought that was because every chance the lady had to answer a question, she would refer (mention) her web site instead of answer the question. She was doing this radio interview and call in show to get hits on her web page (my mom called her a sick lady with a perverted morality to use this discussion to promote her web site).

After that the lady didn't say alot. She kinda stammered, huffed and puffed about being treated so badly by the callers and host of the show, and ended up having to leave the interview early cause of something (I think it was cause every caller was really giving her hell about her lack of personal knowledge on the discussion). After she left, the callers got even worse and I kinda felt bad for her. But I'll tell you a little secret, if your not from Mississippi or you lack a southern accent, don't talk to us like we are retarded. It's a sure way of getting punched right in the face. Or in her case, somebody will show you just how stupid you are. Just because we talk slow doesn't mean we're stupid. And just because we are from the south doesn't mean we're not educated. Alot of times, we just don't need the validation from a loudmouthed outsider to feel good about who we are.