Campaigns against corporal punishment

Campaigns against corporal punishment aim to reduce or eliminate corporal punishment of minors by instigating legal and cultural changes in the areas where such punishments are practiced. Such campaigns date mostly from the late 20th century, although occasional voices in opposition to corporal punishment existed from ancient times through to the modern era.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child defines "corporal punishment" as:

any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light. Most involves hitting ("smacking", "slapping", "spanking") children, with the hand or with an implement – whip, stick, belt, shoe, wooden spoon, etc. But it can also involve, for example, kicking, shaking or throwing children, scratching, pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions, burning, scalding or forced ingestion.[1]

History

Quintilian and Plutarch, both writing in the 1st century A.D., expressed the opinion that corporal punishment was demeaning to those who were not slaves, meaning the children of the freeborn.[2][3] In contrast, according to the classicist Otto Kiefer, Seneca remarked to his friend Lucilius, "Fear and love cannot live together. You seem to me to do right in refusing to be feared by your slaves and chastising them with words alone. Blows are used to correct brute beasts".[4]

However, according to Robert McCole Wilson, "it is only in the last two hundred years that there has been a growing body of opinion" opposed to corporal punishment.[5]

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, one of the earliest organised campaigns was that of the Humanitarian League, with its regular magazine The Humanitarian, which campaigned for several years for the abolition of the chastisement of young seamen in the Royal Navy, a goal partially achieved in 1906 when naval birching was abandoned as a summary punishment.[6] However, it did not manage to get the Navy to abolish caning as a punishment, which continued at Naval training establishments until 1967.[7]

The Howard League for Penal Reform campaigned in the 1930s for, among many other things, the abolition of judicial corporal punishment by cat-o'-nine-tails or birching.[8] This was eventually achieved in the U.K. in 1948.[9]

The Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment (STOPP) was set up in the U.K. in 1968 to campaign for the abolition of corporal punishment in UK schools.[10]

STOPP was a very small pressure group that lobbied government, local authorities and other official institutions. It also investigated individual cases of corporal punishment and aided families wishing to pursue their cases through the UK and European courts.[11]

The UK Parliament abolished corporal punishment in state schools in 1986.[12] STOPP then wound itself up and ceased to exist, though some of the same individuals went on to form EPOCH to campaign to outlaw spanking, and spanking in the domestic setting.

A campaign by the name of Children Are Unbeatable! involves more than 350 separate groups, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo's, Save the Children, Action for Children (formerly NCH), and the National Children's Bureau.[13]

United States

An early U.S. activist against corporal punishment was Horace Mann, who in the 19th century unsuccessfully opposed its use in schools.[14]

Several organizations have been formed in the United States to advocate abolishing corporal punishment in homes and/or schools, including:

Worldwide

An organisation called "Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment Of Children" was formed in 2001 to campaign for the worldwide prohibition by law of all corporal punishment of children, in homes, schools, penal institutions, and other settings. It seeks to monitor the legal situation in every country of the world.[19] The Global Initiative has received endorsement from UNICEF, UNESCO, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children.[20]

In 2008, the UN Study on Violence against Children set a target date of 2009 for universal prohibition, including in the home,[21] an aim described by The Economist the same year as "wildly unrealistic".[22]

The Society for Prevention of Injuries & Corporal Punishment [SPIC] is an Indian organization advocating measures to stop corporal punishment in schools by making teachers and students aware of its dangers.[23]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "General comment No. 8 (2006): The right of the child to protection from corporal punishment and or cruel or degrading forms of punishment (articles 1, 28(2), and 37, inter alia)". United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 42nd Sess., U.N. Doc. CRC/C/GC/8. 2 March 2007. Retrieved January 2015.
  2. ↑ Wilson, Robert M. (1999), A Study of Attitudes Towards Corporal Punishment as an Educational Procedure From the Earliest Times to the Present, 2.6, 'By that boys should suffer corporal punishment, though it is received by custom, and Chrysippus makes no objection to it, I by no means approve; first, because it is a disgrace, and a punishment fit for slaves...' (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 1856 edition, I, III)
  3. ↑ Plutarch. Moralia. The Education of Children. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press. 1927. This also I assert, that children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows or ill-treatment, for it surely is agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the free-born; for so they grow numb and shudder at their tasks, partly from the pain of the blows, partly from the degradation.
  4. ↑ Keifer, Otto (1934). Sexual Life in Ancient Rome. Routledge, 2009. p. 104.
  5. ↑ Wilson, Robert M., 2.3
  6. ↑ Gibson, Ian. The English Vice, Duckworth, London, 1978, pp.171-176. ISBN 0-7156-1264-6
  7. ↑ Roxan, David. "Storm over canings for Navy boys", News of the World, London, 23 April 1967.
  8. ↑ Benson, G. Flogging: The Law and Practice in England, Howard League for Penal Reform, London, 1937. OCLC 5780230
  9. ↑ "Power to order flogging: Abolition approved in Committee", The Times, London, 12 December 1947.
  10. ↑ Jessel, Stephen. "The high cost of cutting out the cane". The Times, London, 28 September 1972.
  11. ↑ Hodges, Lucy. "Caned schoolgirl awarded £1,200". The Times, London, 27 February 1982.
  12. ↑ Gould, Mark. "Sparing the rod". The Guardian, London, 9 January 2007.
  13. ↑ Press Association (19 May 2004). "71% support parental smacking ban, survey finds", The Guardian, London.
  14. ↑ Maurer, Adah; Wallerstein, James S. (1987). "The Influence of Corporal Punishment on Crime". The Natural Child Project. Retrieved January 2015.
  15. ↑ Hendrix, Steve (3 January 2013). "The End of Spanking?". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 2015.
  16. ↑ Mulvaney, Erin (4 March 2014). "Houston lawmaker's bill would stop 'paddling' in the classroom". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved January 2015.
  17. ↑ Chason, Rachel (18 July 2014). "As more schools ban paddling, others defend it". USA Today. Retrieved January 2015.
  18. ↑ "Lake School Board considers ban on corporal punishment". Orlando Sentinel. 20 June 2015. Retrieved 24 December 2015. (registration required (help)).
  19. ↑ Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment Of Children.
  20. ↑ "Recommendation 1666 (2004): Europe-Wide Ban on Corporal Punishment of Children". Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe (21st Sitting). 23 June 2004. Retrieved December 2015.
  21. ↑ "The United Nations Study on Violence against Children". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
  22. ↑ "Spare the rod, say some". The Economist (London). 29 May 2008. Retrieved 25 September 2010.
  23. ↑ http://forensicwayout.com/SPIC/tabid/127/Default.aspx

Further reading

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