Grumpy Old Chook

A bloke on one of the current affairs shows on telly last night was talking about how juvenile crime rates are soaring. Kids as young as nine and ten are increasingly involved in everything from break and enters to assault and even to rape. At the same time, playground bullying and attacks upon teachers are rampant.

As usual, one of the people interview was trying to throw the blame back on the parents. Now, in a properly-run society it should be true that parents are largely responsible for the way their children turn out. Our society, however, strips parents of all their rights concerning the discipline of their children, and then somehow expects them to raise kids that turn out to be decent human beings.

In my opinion, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the idiotic “don’t smack your children” lobby. For hundreds of generations, kids have grown up knowing that if they got out of line their backsides would experience pain. Sure, there were those who went off the tracks anyway, but for the most part they became good, law abiding citizens. Even when my kids were growing up, to hear of an 18 or 19 year old being involved in a serious crime was extremely rare. For a nine or ten year old to be involved in such things was utterly unthinkable.

At the same time, that discipline from the home was followed through in the society. If you misbehaved in school, you could expect to get the cane. I only ever received “six of the best” once. I was 6 years old, and attending a tiny one-teacher school with about a dozen pupils. A terrible speller, I had managed to get 27 words wrong in a 30 word spelling test – and was supposed to take the results home to show my mother. Knowing the pain that was likely to result from her seeing this effort, somewhere along the three-mile bike ride home I stopped, tore the offensive paper into a dozen pieces, and threw it into the bushes.

Unfortunately someone (another student? a parent? the teacher? who knows?!) found the pieces, and when I arrived at school the next morning I was made to face the consequences of my actions. (And just in case I should be tempted to think that “six of the best” was in any case better than what I would have received from my mother, the teacher personally delivered both the original paper and a report of my actions to her, so I copped it there as well.)

I hated the teacher with a passion – for about a week. Did I suffer lifelong damage because of it? Emphatically not! Did I learn that covering up my mistakes to avoid punishment was not a really good idea? You betcha!

Not only school, but the whole of society followed through with discipline. Pinch an apple from the local store, and the store keeper would chase you with a broom – and swat you, if he was quick enough to catch you. Let the local copper catch you doing something wrong, and you could expect a kick in the pants.

Today, the namby-pambies would call that abuse. I was in a shopping centre recently when a little monster of about three or four marched up to the deli counter and began kicking furiously at the front of their display cabinet. The shopkeeper came out, lightly swatted his backside and told him to get lost. The reaction of the mother, who was shopping two stores away, was to turn on the shopkeeper and furiously tell him, “Don’t you dare hit my child!” – not one word to the child about his behaviour: in fact, she rewarded him with a lolly!

In reality, the discipline we received from every level of society was a lesson in consequences. Every action has consequences, both natural and legal. Natural consequences are intrinsic to the action – for instance, if you get drunk, you will suffer a hangover next day. Legal consequences are those enforced by society to maintain law and order – for example, if you get drunk and try to drive a car, you may be fined, lose your licence or even end up in gaol.

The “don’t smack” nonsense strips childhood misdemeanors of legal consequences. Children learn that they can do what they like, and will not have to pay a penalty. We are told that physical punishment will damage them for life. Yet when they enter the wider society, they will face physical legal consequences for their actions. If they don’t learn to pull their heads in, society will take their physical bodies and place them in a physical prison. Once there, they stand a good chance of receiving physical pain from other inmates that far outweighs what they might have received from parents, teachers or their elders in society if discipline had not been outlawed.

Want to reverse the juvenile crime wave? The answer is very simple: give parents back the right to discipline their kids. Bring back the cane in school. Stop treating kids as though they are made of finest bone china. Let them, from the earliest possible age, begin to learn that every action has a consequence, and that when they choose the action they are also choosing the consequence. Kids learn quickly – it won’t take them long to get the idea and start choosing the right actions.

This blog is © Lynn Fowler

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