KHTV, Little Rock:

Regarding your reports last Thursday and Friday evenings about the Malvern coach charged for paddling and bruising a child:

I noted this evening (5:00 PM, Monday, 4-05-04) that you cited the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children under two years should watch no tv at all (in connection with your report on the study comparing tv viewing in early childhood and the incidence of ADHD). That kind of information is a service to our community, in my opinion. It gives your viewers a choice to accept new and important knowledge or to hold on to myth and folklore.

However, when you reported the brutish assault on the junior high school student by a gym teacher weilding a board, you failed to inform the public that the same American Academy of Pediatrics is one of over forty national professional organizations that favor the abolition of paddling. For a list of just a few of them, see: http://stophitting.com/disatschool/usorgs.php

In January and February we wrote to the state chapters of most of the national groups who've publically favored a ban on school corporal punishment. To date, not one of them, including Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, has been willing to offer the simplest comment on the occurrences of paddling related injuries of children in Arkansas public schools.

If you all can keep the public ignorant, you may never need to offer the simplest comment on school child abuse.

Randy Cox, LCSW
NeverHitAChild.ORG
Little Rock
rcox@cei.net