Journal Entry 2

I object to corporal punishment . It is instantly effective, but it is not good in the long t. In first year in high school, my teacher inflicted punishment on my friend and me. We thought it was so harsh, and we didn't acknowledge our fault. We just talked about our exam. since the punishment day, we disliked our teacher.

As a result, my first year in high school was not good. She was so fearful, so every classmate was uncomfortable.

Corporal punishment is very controversial topic. Therfore, we have to be careful to punish students.

This sentence makes me touched. The true care and love toward student can make a trouble-maker into a model student. I totaly agree with that. But I think we should take into consideration about the teacher who had to choose corporal punishment. They way there are a lot of students whom they must take care of that the "love and care policy" is difficult to achieve. It's the problem of the system of Korean school. School needs more teacher than now.

We should remember. Corporal punishment is not a good method to control students but there are always reasons that make the bad policy comes up to the surface.

I agree that corporal punishment is bad in the long view.
When I was middle school student, my mathematics teacher was very dreadful.
If students can't get a good grade at the test, she give us corporal punishment with her stick.
It was really hurt so mathematics exam is horror for me.
I became dislike mathematics so far.

Younghee choi wrote:

On Corporal Punishment

A few months ago, the scene at which a teacher was spanking her student harshly was caught on a mobile phone video camera by another student in an elementary school. The video was placed on the internet, which caused a severe criticism against the teacher among netizens. The teacher was eventually penalized for the corporal punishment.

What I’d like to write for this journal is about corporal punishment, which is a very controversial issue especially in school settings. As a would-be teacher, this issue will be what I should take into consideration. The teacher mentioned in the beginning probably used corporal punishment as a discipline tool, but the teacher’s behavior went to extremes and had to suffer dishonor as a teacher.

The teacher in the news would have a reasonable basis to stand on in using corporal punishment. Proponents of corporal punishment believe that it is effective not only in increasing students’ immediate compliance but also in halting their future misbehaviors. In spite of these plausible standpoints, I’m strongly against corporal punishment. According to research, corporal punishment actually increased child aggression and antisocial behavior. In addition, children who experienced corporal punishment showed alcoholism, drug abuse, anxiety, and depressions in adulthood. It does not teach children right from wrong, either.

In short, it may be easy to control students using threat and corporal punishment since corporal punishment has a short-term effect on students’ behavior. However, considering its harmful long-term effect, corporal punishment should be restrained. Instead, teacher’s care and attention should take the place of it because teacher’s love really has a power to move students’ mind.

Good journal entry, Younghee, and very relevant considering your chosen profession in teaching.

In my opinion, corporal punishment is basically a 'quick fix' for teachers who don't have the patience or skill to influence their students in other, more humane ways. Essentially I think it actually teaches children to believe that violence is the way to fix problems or settle differences.

I can recall in my early primary school years in Australia, corporal punishment was still quite common. In my very first year of schooling (called 'Prep' - the year preceding Grade 1 - so I had just turned five years old) I was actually smacked on the palm of my hand by a teacher with a ruler, in front of the class. I cannot for the life of me remember what I did wrong, but I certainly remember the pain of the ruler and the humiliation of being hit with it in front of the whole class.

That I think is the key issue - children don't remember or learn from the misbehavior, they just learn fear. Eventually some of them learn how to then inflict this on others.

Good topic, Younghee - very important and thought-provoking.

Keep up the excellent work,

~ Jason


***