September 22, 2005 Dear Jordan, I disagree with the spirit of the letter. Surely no one advocates violence at any level in the classroom. Yet there are legitimate uses of physical discipline when teachers are abused by students. Teachers hands are already too tied in the classroom and have limited means of controlling unruly and disruptive students. Behavior can be modified by this method without producing physical damage. It seems to me that a conditional corporal punishment approach as a middle ground is most defensible. This view does not advocate spanking, but rather that a "blanket injunction" against spanking cannot be supported scientifically. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Robert E_____ September 23, 2005 Dear Dr. E_____, Your ambivalence toward spanking reminds me of a remark made by one of my students at Folsom State Prison where I used to give presentations. He said with total candor, "I'm not a violent person. I don't believe in it. I would never hit my wife unless she really deserved it." Well, hitting people -- and children are people -- is something that one approves or doesn't; something one does or doesn't. You can't have it both ways. Like virginity: you are or you aren't. Remember Ilya, the lovely Greek prostitute who fancied herself a pure virgin on Sundays? You claim that a "blanket injunction" against spanking cannot be supported scientifically. Nor is there any scientific research supporting a blanket injunction against wife beating. But does that make it okay? You are correct that "behavior can be modified by this method without producing physical damage." Surely nothing works like a little pain judiciously applied. My Folsom student, quoted above, would concur. As for the serious research regarding spanking, I happen to know something about that. If you are interested, I'll point you to some of the scholarship amassed over the past century that shows spanking's dangers. And, to be fair, I will examine any research you have that shows its benefits. In The History of Corporal Punishment (1938), George Ryley Scott has this to say on the matter: "The justification for... a practice lies not in the fact that it possesses certain virtues, but that those virtues outweigh its drawbacks, or that it serves society in some essential form for which there is no alternative method available. By no species of argument can anything of this nature be claimed for corporal punishment. Its evils, its drawbacks, and its disadvantages, as we have seen in the process of our inquiry, outweigh hugely and in every possible way, its few virtues— virtues which are based upon the most dubious foundations." Sincerely, Jordan Riak, Executive Director, PTAVE