To Spank Or Not To Spank

4 Pages 944 Words

To Spank or Not to Spank

“No, Valerie! You can’t play with me!” a bratty six-year-old screamed at his helpless three-year-old sister. “Give me the controller now,” he demanded as he ripped it from his sister’s tender hands and pushed her to the floor. Then the toddler started to cry in pain and called for her father. Today’s parents deal with the form of discipline in a much more liberal sense. Many parents nowadays would sit down and talk with their young child explaining to them that what they did was wrong, but not to worry because it’s not really their fault because they didn’t know any better. Then they send their child off on a 15-minute “timeout.” However, I feel that modern means of child discipline are far too liberal and ineffective and that sometimes children need to be disciplined.
Cornell West and Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s A World Upside Down takes us deep inside the world of teen violence, murder, crime, and suicide. Mind boggling facts such as “Children are now responsible for a staggering 20 million crimes a year” fill the article. West and Hewlett also write, “The enormous surge in youth violence is perhaps the most cruel--and most costly--manifestation of our inability to nurture our young” (West 103). Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “nurture” as: training, upbringing; to educate; to further the development of. In that sense of the word, “nurture” it is parents’ responsibility to “educate” their children. Educate them how? Educate your children not only in school aspects, but also in morality. To nurture is also to train. Parents must also train their children to act in appropriate ways.
I support Barbara Lerner and her thinking when she says, “Consider spanking. Effective moral education teaches children to make critical moral distinctions” (Lerner 138). In my opinion the liberal approach to discipline that many of today’s pa...