Logan's+Mosaic

Corporal Punishment
The first definition of corporal punishment in the New Oxford American Dictionary is “physical punishment, such as caning or flogging.” The second definition is “punishment under law that includes imprisonment and death.” The most common definition people would think of would be pertaining to a Catholic school and how they are known for beating their students. Some people resent corporal punishment because they think it is not moral, while others think that it teaches kids discipline. I, myself, haven’t experienced anything like corporal punishment before, but I have been punished. My personal view on corporal punishment is that it shouldn’t be allowed in schools because I think that's a job for parents and not a teacher, who might hit a student because he/she doesn’t like them.

There is only one time I got in trouble in school. I didn’t like this teacher, so I would purposely ignore the lesson being taught, daydream, and talk to my friends. This particular time, I got kicked out of class for laughing at something one of my friends said. The teacher yelled at me, gave me a pink piece of paper, and told me to go to my advisor. This punishment was given without much consequence, as my parents were not called. This was the most significant punishment I have had in my school life. I was kicked out of the classroom in the fifth grade. It wasn’t epic like other people’s stories, like Dahl's, but it was significant to me.

Roald didn’t get many punishments, but when he got them, they were pretty severe. One example was when he put the mouse in Mrs. Pratchett’s candy jar. Mrs. Pratchett told Roald’s teacher, and he was caned. Another example was when sugar was found in the hallway and when asked no one confessed. The headmaster took away everyone's tuck boxes, including Roald's.

Most of the articles I found were about how people think that it is wrong to hit kids that aren’t even yours, but I didn’t chose any of those articles. This article from the Sydney Herald Newspaper talked of corporal punishment in other countries. In Australia, there is caning like in __Boy__ by Roald Dahl. There is a law there that says that men are able to beat their spouse with a cane or weapon of choice. A model and mother of two was sentenced to flogging because she had a beer at a night club. When she was in the courtroom, the judge gave her a choice either be lashed six times by a rattan stick and go to jail for three years or pay a hefty fine.

My closing opinion on corporal punishment is very simple; I think it is wrong to beat a kid with a rattan stick, even if they misbehaved in class. If caning was a popular thing now, I probably would get caned a lot. America is lucky because we don’t have a lot of school that have corporal punishment, but other countries have it as a law mostly for women. It is very sad that other countries would allow beating of a woman publicly because they had a drink at a night club.

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