Spare the rod, spare the child

February 03, 2004

A story (free registration required) in yesterday's Dallas Morning News surprised us, for we'd long thought that official policies condoning corporal punishment in the form of paddling had gone the way of the dodo bird.

But the official policy in the Dallas School District is that students may be paddled if parents sign a permission slip, and almost 3,300 parents have done so. We'd think this would separate the kids into beatables and unbeatables. But the school district feels its policy is humane:

"Paddling is a part of a principal's tool box," said Dallas school district trustee Ron Price. "It's not the first tool they use, but it's one of the tools." Mr. Price lobbied to preserve paddling in some form last year when most trustees wanted to ban it completely.

The paddlings only are used "as a last resort" after an entire checklist of measures have been tried first, and are administered in private. Interestingly enough, the school district isn't keen on suspension, for it forces kids to lose valuable instructional time.

We're well aware that many folks feel that when you "spare the rod," you "spoil the child." We beg to differ.

We are flatly opposed to corporal punishment in the form of hitting a student, for two reasons. First, it teaches children that hitting is an acceptable solution to a problem, and secondly, it is not an effective punishment.

The Wrong Lesson: What adults fail to remember time and time again is that children learn from what they see and feel just as much as (if not more than) by what they hear. And if schools say "hitting is wrong, don't solve your problems with violence" and then excuse themselves to do exactly that, which lesson will the student learn?

We often tell kids (especially ones who are having trouble getting along with others without hitting) to use creative problem solving. Why can't schools do the same? There are a lot of great ways to "punish" kids with techniques a lot more effective than paddling, as explained next.

An Ineffective Measure: The reason why paddling doesn't work is because it's a form of positive reinforcement, which may change behavior in the short term, but is far less effective in changing long-term behavior than negative reinforcement.

Yes, you heard us correctly.

Ask most folks what they think the difference is between positive and negative reinforcement, and they'll tell you the first is a reward and the second is a punishment. But ask a psychologist, and the answer is very different, with an important clue as to how schools and parents can discipline their children more effectively.

While common usage has distorted the meaning, in actuality, a positive reinforcement is "something added to the system" while a negative one is "something taken away."

This means that a reward could be something like a treat or money (something added: positive) or the removal of something unwanted, such as a weekend without chores or homework (negative).

Punishments can go the same way. A punishment could take the form of paddling or spanking (pain added: positive), or the removal of privileges or allowance (negative).

Again, psychologists have found that while positive reinforcement can have a short-term impact on behavior, it is the negative reinforcement (something taken away, which could be a "good thing" or a "bad thing") that has the lasting affect on behavior.

In the Dallas School District, not all the trustees were in favor of the paddling policy. Ken Zornes hit the psychological nail on the head when he referred to paddling as a "quick remedy with no long-term impact."

So, the clue for parents and schools is simply to find out what the kid likes and dislikes, and then turn them into negative reinforcements for both rewards (removing the dislikes) and punishments (removing the likes).

It works.