Eve's+Mosaic

Corporal Punishment
At one point, every child has gotten punished. All around the world, children who have done something bad or wrong or nothing at all have received some sort of punishment. Punishment varies from family to family and society to society, and some are more severe than others. It can be from losing privlages like not seeing your friends or being abused by objects, like Dahl. Wherever you go, there will be different punishments for different places.

I have never personally been a victim of corporal punishment but to much less severe things. Privileges would fall under that category. I would get them taken away and would have to earn them back gradually, over time. When I was younger, I always thought the punishments I received were very bad and too harsh. Now I think about how the punishments weren't bad at all, and I think about the other kids in the world getting abused mentally and physically right now. I realize how fortunate I am to live in the society that I do, where I don't get corporal punishment.

Dahl’s childhood was greatly influenced by punishment. Corporal punishment was what most teachers used to punish kids back in the time period when he was a child in the United Kingdom. And Dahl learned that very early. When he went to his first school, Llandaff Cathedral School, his mother pulled him out because he was getting abused too often. His mother thought it was very inappropriate for any adults to hit a child for punishment because of her beliefs and where and how she was brought up. The headmaster Mr. Coombes told Dahl’s mother that corporal punishment was what they did in British schools and if she didn't like it, she could take Dahl to a different school. Dahl also had a point of view for this. He was so surprised that older kids could actually wound the younger boys, like Dahl. When Dahl played the trick on Mrs. Pratchett and was then found out with his friends, he was beaten. When his mother found out that is what caused the conflict with his mother wanting to take Dahl out of that school and enroll him in an English school instead.

When Dahl went to boarding school, things changed a bit. The older kids got to boss the younger kids around and make them do things for them. If they didn't, then they would be punished by the older kids, which usually involved a beating with a cane. Corporal punishment became a daily ritual for him. Dahl was beaten for the most insignificant things, like burning toast or not cleaning up the last single speck of dirt that an older kid had told him to do. When Dahl looked back at his childhood and read the letters he sent home, he said all of his past experiences made him the writer he was. Certain aspects got portrayed in the books he wrote later on, like in //Charlie and the Chocolate Factory// and the incident with the rat in the candy jar for Mrs. Pratchett.

Corporal punishment is still used to this day. According to //Time// magazine, nearly a quarter million children in the 2006-2007 academic year were subjected to corporal punishment. Out of all the states in the country, only in 20 is it actually legal to hit a child in this time. Out of those states, Texas uses corporal punishment the most in the nation, as well as punishing the most students with disabilities. Corporal punishment is still condoned because it is sufficient and easy to hand out if necessary. If schools didn't have other methods to punish children, it might cause further disturbances, prodding the teachers to use their own methods, which could be far worse, such as corporal punishment.

In the end, corporal puishment will never be stopped entirely. As long as someone had a reason or no reason at all, kids and adults of all ages will get punished.

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