If you can’t teach them, beat them.

Recently in Western Australia there has been some discussion about the problems of youth - falling education standards, lack of respect for authority and for the law, bad behaviour with motor vehicles and in other ways.

As usual when these matters are discussed, several people have written to the newspaper advocating the re-introduction of corporal punishment in schools. It was abolished in Western Australian schools some years ago. One man described how he and his cousin had misbehaved at school one day. He got the cane, his cousin got the birch, and they never did it again.

I will short-circuit any arguments for or against this proposal by pointing out that it is just not practical. It would be like trying to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. Many younger teachers in schools today would have been schoolchildren themselves in a time when corporal punishment was no longer used. Some of them occasionally might dream about whacking the kids but if it became a reality it might seem bizarre, like a horror movie.

Apart from that, there would be issues with insurance, with occupational health and safety, with the possibility of litigation. Also, a number of behavioural and personality disorders in children, have been identified and named since the ‘good old days’. I myself have Asperger’s syndrome, which was only identified, named and described as recently as 1994. Are these children to have their syndromes beaten out of them? Or will they be given exemption from beating on account of their syndromes? The latter suggestion might seem more sensible than the former but in fact they are both equally ridiculous, because they are quite impractical.

At some point in recent decades, the idea took root in our education system that children are basically good and will do the right thing and want to learn and do well, so there is no need for harsh discipline, physical or otherwise. Maybe this is true, it would be nice if it were. But the society in which the education system is immersed seems bent on making it as hard as possible for children to conform to this ideal.

There seems to be a tendency in the materialistic societies of the ‘West’ to attack and destroy their children. Not consciously, but in the effect of policies and actions. Perhaps this is linked to the necrophilous or death-loving tendencies in these societies. What!? You might ask. It is suggested that such tendencies exist, reflected in our economic system, devoted to converting the earth’s resources into lifeless waste at an ever-increasing rate, as though the earth were flat and without limit.

From birth, most children are subjected to the yammering of commercial television for up to 18 hours a day. They eat too much food and not enough of it healthy, being loaded with sugars, fats and stimulant drugs. The only values and information they get pour out of the television, screaming advertisements trumpeting greed and materialism, ‘news’ programs full of distortions, lies and beat-ups, pornography both sexual and violent. When they turn seventeen they are given a licence to drive an over-sized, over-powered car that can do up to 200 kph and told to drive carefully and responsibly, after years of exposure to thousands of aggressive car advertisements giving quite the opposite message. Children have to fight their way through all this to become the basically good and well-behaved people of the ideal. It is marvellous that so many of them succeed in this to any extent. Education systems are chronically under-funded and teachers are given relatively low pay and status.

I know of many children, sweet and good and clever when little, whom I have seen grow up into no-hopers. They are likeable enough but unemployable. They are sub-literate, unskilled, unable to focus on anything for long and sexually irresponsible. If they get any money it is blown on something which they have seen advertised again and again, while bills are neglected and chronic debt builds up (I suppose TV says ‘buy this! Buy that!’ it doesn’t shout ‘Pay your bills!’ twenty times an hour). They are unable to do without some constant electronic noise.

Yes, this sounds like the usual rant about the younger generation from an old  curmudgeon. But consider this case in my circle of acquaintances. A woman aged 29 who wandered out of school without completing a high school certificate, has never had a job, never married, but has had six children, two of whom died, one has disappeared with its father, one is in custody of its grandmother, and two are in foster care. I’ve known this woman since she was a toddler and have always liked her. So would anyone, just as a person.

The legendary Ed Murrow was concerned 50 years ago about the direction of television. It has only got worse since his time. The trouble is that television isn’t a constructive service that needs advertising to support its worthy aims. The prime purpose of television is as a medium for advertising. All the programming is only a secondary purpose and must serve the prime one.

It is suggested that a society that brings up its children as described here, is not a life-loving society that nurtures its children. It is a cannibalistic society that devours its children. To come back to the subject of this post, re-introducing corporal punishment into schools would just add to the attack on children. Fill their bodies and minds with toxins, then try to thrash the poison out of them. It makes no sense.