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NZCPR
Guest Forum
Opinion piece by
Bruce Logan
14 April 07
The
Rise of Violence in Schools
It's not
always a good idea to base an argument on personal experience
but I will risk it.
In 1989,
just before the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, I
was a member of the PPTA executive and invited to appear on a
TV programme with Russell Marshall, the then Minister of
Education. I commented that I was not convinced the majority
of teachers were in favour of abolition.
A couple of
days after the interview I attended a PPTA meeting along with
about 200 other teachers. To my surprise, on an overhead at
the front of the hall was a statement accusing me of
‘ethical misconduct’. Although at no point during the
interview did I openly challenge or disagree with PPTA policy,
what was said was sufficient to bring the so-called ‘ethics
charge’. The ‘crime’? To dare to think differently and
suggest that doubt publicly.
Like most
teachers, I had believed that the PPTA stood for the greater
good of education. I also – naively - believed that being a
generally literate bunch of individuals, that its leadership
would value the ability of members to articulate different
points of view. Not so.
Most
classroom teachers are simply too busy to realise that the
deeper one looks into the ideology of the teacher unions, the
more individual differences are subsumed into the collective
will. Pay and conditions are surface concerns. When some
well-placed ideologues desire nothing short of a new social
order, lobbying around school policy are their levers for
bringing about the change. The luminaries of the liberal left
today, even more so, position themselves as the champions of
tolerance, but to disagree with their views is to invite the sternest censure.
In my
experience, some members of the PPTA executive were so
convinced of the virtue of their own ideology that any kind of
disagreement was unacceptable. Although the charge against me
was to eventually fall down the hole it deserved, the
blindness remained.
The claim
made at the time, which suggested a link between corporal
punishment and violence in schools has been proved wrong.
Violence in schools has increased tremendously since
abolition. Of course there may be no actual causation either
way, but the argument linking punishment and violence has now
been extended and forged between violence and parental
smacking.
Every age
has its blind spot. The late 20th century and early 21st
century have been and remain very spotted indeed.
Objectively
speaking, violence is neither good nor bad. Its morality is
determined by its purpose. For example, a surgeon may cut open
a patient’s abdomen; we usually do not call that violence
although strictly speaking it is a violent act against the
body, which could (if botched) cause death. Similarly, a
brutal tackle on the rugby field is, to most participants and
observers, what goes with the territory, and grabbing a
child’s arm when he is about to run onto the road, could
result in physical harm (bruising) if it was done quickly or
aggressively. If however, someone breaks into a house and
beats the occupant about the head, most of us would rightly
see this as a violent act warranting opprobrium and severe
punishment.
When
physical force occurs in legitimate contexts, the people
concerned usually take care to ensure that suffering is kept
to a minimum. The surgeon is a highly-trained and experienced
professional, as is the franchised rugby player, and even the
responsible parent. The wider context reminds observers that
the primary aim in each of these examples is not to inflict
pain and suffering, but nevertheless, pain may occur as part
and parcel of what is going on. None of us like to impose
pain; and even today, sadism and masochism remain perversions
even in a morally relativist age (it is still possible to
confidently make this claim unless one finds oneself at a
dinner table with liberally lubricated academics).
A pervasive
ideology has developed which assumes that violence, by
definition, is evil. A moment’s reflection should suggest
however, that this is not the case. But such is the power of
the ideology that we are ready to label corporal punishment in
schools and smacking in the home as ‘violence’. So,
consequently, the corrective smack on the child’s hand is
put on the same plane as beating a householder about the head.
No wonder there is confusion. Certainly the proponents of
‘reform’ would permit a quantitative difference but not a
qualitative one - the point of context and purpose is lost on
them.
This is
evident in the argument, which is frequently put; “I cannot
hit my wife or a friend so why should I be permitted to smack
my child?” Such an argument is only possible when
contemporary understandings of human rights are considered the
moral foundation for any judgment about human relationships.
The
relationship between parent and child is morally different
from that between two adults. Why? Because, while in the best
of all possible worlds, it might be true to claim that we are
all responsible for each other, it is certainly true that
parents are responsible for the nurturing and teaching, which
means the disciplining, of their children. Children learn, and
all learning involves discipline: a word with the same root as
disciple. Interestingly, university subjects are still
referred to as ‘disciplines’, presumably because one who
studies in any particular area is learning the proper
conventions for that subject, and is committed to a course of
study even when they don’t feel like it. The unspoken
assumption is that the nurture and teaching will, as time
progresses, produce maturity in graduate students. Much of the
‘pain’ of producing lengthy research projects and sitting
examinations will prove invaluable in the ‘real world’ of
work, but it’s all necessary.
The dynamic
is similar in parenting: discipline in the home helps to
instill character, which will be tested in almost every adult
decision. Restraint or light smacking will form part of the
arsenal in the parental toolbox, but in saying this, let’s
not confuse this with abuse or a license to beat children with
implements. That is very different.
If we are
to understand the proper nature of the parent’s
responsibility for his or her children we also need to come to
grips with the role of the state and its relationship to its
citizens and the families of those citizens.
The state,
even after 50 years of social welfare, is not a surrogate
‘parent’. It has a responsibility to make sure that the
weak and vulnerable are protected from harm and that, of
course, includes children. But the state has neither the
responsibility nor the right to interfere in the relationship
between parent and child when no permanent harm is being done.
And to claim that smacking is harmful is wishful thinking of
the silliest kind. There is no reliable evidence either in
history or sociology to establish that connection. The only
connection is to be found in the head of the anti-violence
ideologist, and it is this same ideology that gets in the way
of commonsense in the business of disciplining children in the
home and in schools.
It is
revealing to observe the invective frequently hurled at
‘right wing fundamentalist Christians’ (which, by the way,
is code for anyone who dares to disagree) in the debate around
the repeal of section 59. No one is proud of New Zealand’s
high rates of child abuse, but neither should our legislators
confuse the real problem with a phantom one. Real child
abusers need to be caught and punished, and one suspects that
repeal of section 59 will not help identify them one jot. What
it might do, however, is cast aspersions leading to the
prosecution of responsible parents who employ the occasional
use of a smack for correction. The real agenda behind such
emotive labels is a perceived threat - much like I experienced
as a teacher all those years ago - anyone who challenges the
prevailing liberal orthodoxy gets ideologically placed in the
‘nasty’ bracket. Their views need to be jeered at and
promptly dismissed.
But on this
issue the electorate is making its opposition clear. And
what’s more, it’s not just those of a religious persuasion
who are concerned; it’s other ordinary New Zealanders who
rightly sense not only what Green MP Sue Bradford’s bill if
passed, may mean for raising their children, but also the way
the Labour government and its allies are going about their
task.
As the
Greek General Pyrrhus wrote in 270 BC when his armies scored a
victory over Rome, ‘One more such victory and our cause is
lost’; it may well be the case that Helen Clark and Sue
Bradford ‘win the battle’ on the smacking bill (i.e. get
it promptly through parliament), but it is by no means certain
that the electorate will forget in 2008.
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