A FEW YEARS AGO on the Paediatric Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a mother entered the ward just as her child was dying.
The medical team, desperately trying to save the infant’s life, was administering external cardiac massage. They were unsuccessful and the child died.
The mother’s distraught comment was: “Two big able doctors jump on the li’l boy chest till them kill he dead.” She didn’t understand the violent realities of CPR. The ward sister’s comment was: “The medical team really tried their best to save the little lad.” She understood.
Reading the various opinions about corporal punishment that have been airing recently brought this memory back to me. Clearly there are entrenched sides on this issue, as expected. Unfortunately, much of what I’ve read is unfair, illogical and misses the point.
The first red herring is that flogging is violent. Of course it is. But the implication that all violence is negative needs to be dispelled. Surgeons all over the world every day inflict major violence on patients. They are responsible for more bloodletting than all the drug lords and gang dons put together.
If you’re like the mother above, you would describe surgical operations using terms like: “He rip open the poor man’s belly and chop out all he guts.” If you understood what was happening, you would say: “The surgeon skilfully opened the abdomen and resected the tumour.”
There is positive violence – that which aims to heal and cure. There is also negative violence – the aim of which is to cause harm, injury and death.
Flogging, whether at home or school, and in the proper context, has one aim – to straighten out a wayward youngster, to cure him or her of some tendency that, left unchecked, will lead to negative repercussions. It is the violence of good.
The second red herring is that flogging creates criminals and other such deranged monsters. If this were true, nearly all Bajans over 40 or 50 years would be serial killers. Curiously, it is precisely in some countries that have banned flogging that one finds the most heinous criminal activity. Just look at the United States and its appalling record of gun crime, assaults on black people by various police forces, and its long list of serial killers.
Police brutality
The third – and perhaps the worse – red herring is when flogging is made synonymous with abuse. Police brutality exists, but it is not consistent with genuine policing. We all understand this. So nobody suggests getting rid of all police when police abuse crops up. We recommend getting rid of the abusive person. Yet, every time child abuse crops up, we react by trying to stamp out flogging. We should never condone abuse in any form, but flogging and abuse are not the same.
For example, one anti-flogging stalwart wrote graphically about “licks crashing down on coccyges”. That’s abuse. In flogging, the strap is applied, not to the bony coccyx, but to the ample muscle of the buttock – one of the thickest and strongest muscles in the body.
Finally, there’s the major cop-out by the anti-flogging brigade. The alternative, they say, is to “find creative methods” to discipline. They never identify these “creative methods”. They also wilfully ignore the fact that flogging is, again in the right context, a last resort when talking, negotiating, encouraging, deprivation, threats and frank anger have all failed.
Few caring parents or teachers use corporal punishment as a first resort. You have to ask what creative methods a harassed teacher, faced with a class of 30 youngsters, can use on a couple of disruptive, hard-ears, own-way students whose sole aim is to disrupt the class. After all the talking, there is only suspension or dismissal from school.
The result? The student’s education is compromised. He is now worse off.
Most youngsters will never need to be flogged – they are reasonable and respond to reason. But there is a minority who, when all else fails, may respond to the strap. To deny them this is probably as great an abuse as one will ever find.
– Trevor R. Shepherd
