Corporal Punishment
verses the Power of the Pregnant Pause
As many
people who attended schools in the early sixties, corporal punishment was part
of our educational experience. There
were paddles with holes drilled into them to create blisters on our bottoms and
samurai teachers swinging yardsticks.
Teachers often gave students a choice: “the paddle or a call to your
mother.” Most students were so terrified
of the wrath of their parents that they gladly accepted the paddle. Fortunately for me, my patens didn’t have a
telephone. Nevertheless, I learned my
lesson in sixth grade about the short-comings of corporal punishment.
In
everyone’s sixth grade class there is one boy who is always in trouble. Lowell was that boy in my class. He spent much of his time wandering about the
room pulling girl’s braids trying desperately to get their attention just like
every other boy, but still Lowell was different. He smelled like stale cigarettes. His
clothing was dirty and in bad repair. It
was a poor neighborhood; most of the student wore patched hand-me-down
clothing, but rumor had it that Lowell’s parents were alcoholics that frequently
locked their children out of the house over night when they had parties.
On this
particular day when a girl complained to Miss Peterson, our fresh-from-college
first-year teacher, that Lowell had pulled her hair. Miss Peterson really lost
it. She was furious. She demanded that Lowell bend over a desk and
she wielded her yardstick like a mighty club.
Lowell received these humiliating beatings daily, but today was
different. She was the Samurai Warrior
and Lowell was the nemesis. She began
hitting him harder and harder at first on the buttocks and then down his
thighs, at least twenty or thirty hard blows.
Suddenly Lowell turned around, his face crimson with rage, snatched the
yardstick from Miss Peterson’s hand and with one crack broke it in half. Miss Peterson’s face was horrified and she stepped
away. Lowell tossed the broken yardstick
aside and raised his hands above his head.
“I’m going to kill you!” he roared seething with anger. As Lowell
stepped toward Miss Peterson, all of the boys in the classroom, leaped on him
and tried to hold him back, but it was like holding back a run-away locomotive. Lowell continued forward carrying them with
him and Miss Peterson turned and ran from the room followed by Lowell with all
of the boys still clinging to him. In a
few minutes, our principal, Mrs. MacDonald came into the classroom, quieted the
frightened students, and took over for Miss Peterson. Lowell and Miss Peterson had the rest of the
day off.
When I became a
teacher a decade later, corporal punishment was still being used in the
classroom, but after that experience, I had no desire to use it. Since I stood a whopping five foot one inch
almost and ninety-five pounds, I knew the likelihood of me intimidating anyone
was pretty small, so I had to find another way.
I really didn’t have to look any further than my parents. My parents both had very different approaches
to discipline. My mother (another five
foot monster) used corporal punishment.
She would slap you, break into tears and wail, “Wait until your father
gets home.” Since she was small, the
slapping wasn’t much although we did feel badly for making her cry. The real terror were her words, “Wait until
your father gets home.”
My
father never spanked anyone. He was the
master of the pregnant pause, forcing you to wait and think about what you had
done. For example, on one particular
day, I had attempted to kick my younger brother, Dave, in the chin for his
verbal taunting. Just as I was about to
release my anger on him, he slammed the door to his bedroom and my foot penetrated
his bedroom door. I had to wait three
hours for my dad to get home. Petrified
I began to create excuses for my behavior.
It was, after all, Dave’s fault because if he had not slammed that door,
he would have been properly kicked in the chin and door would have suffered no
damage.
When my
father got home, I met him in the driveway filled with anxiety. I tried to tell him what had happened and who
was to blame, but he would not listen.
He told me to wait until after dinner.
My anxiety increased. After
dinner he told me to wait until he had had a shower and changed his clothing. My anxiety increased even more. After that I had to wait while he read the
paper and had time to unwind from work.
I was near manic stage. Finally he
asked me to sit down at the kitchen table and wait while he fixed himself a cup
of coffee, got me a glass of milk and put a dozen Oreo cookies on a plate. I knew I couldn’t eat cookies or drink milk
because my stomach was churning. After a
long slow sip of coffee, my father asked me to explain what I had done wrong
that had upset my mother so much. Like a
machine gun, I rattled off all of the events of the day explaining how it was
really my brother’s fault because if he hadn’t slammed that door nothing would
have been broken except his chin. “So,
do think kicking your brother’s chin would have been better than kicking the
door?” He waited for my response and I
realized the error in my judgment. I had
to admit it was not. He sipped his
coffee and nibbled on a cookie while I waited nervously. “What could you have done differently?” Even though I again insisted that if my
brother hadn’t taunted me, this would never have happened, he would not accept
it. He shook his head and indicated that
he was talking to me and not my brother.
After I had identified several alternative plans to dealing with a
taunting brother, he pointed out there was still the matter of the broken
door. He explained to me that replacing
that door would take money from the family’s recreation budget and since I was
the one who broke it, he didn’t think it was fair for the entire family to
suffer because of my lapse in judgment.
He again asked me to think of ways I could earn the money to replace the
door forcing me to select chores I could do for neighbors to earn enough to
replace the door. As a result, I ended
up gardening and mowing lawns all summer.
Even though I paid my father back for the broken door, he never replaced
it until I moved away as reminder to me to not to lose my temper.
It is
in the power of the pregnant pause (the waiting) that forces students to think
about what they have done, take ownership for their poor choices, consider
alternative behaviors and take responsibility for repairing the damage. Some people call this “Think Time” and it
helps students learn to be responsible.
Next time you send a student into the hall wait to talk him. Let them simmer for a while. It will give you time to regain your
composure, so you can direct his/her understanding of his/her behavior in a
calm, collected manner. It allows the
student to think about what he/she did wrong.
Although corporal punishment is rarely used in today world, we do have
teachers who use verbal assaults and intimidation to control students. These tactics do not teach students to take
ownership for their behavior and learn other methods of problem solving or in
Lowell’s case socialization. Leave the
yardstick in the classroom. You don’t
want to become Miss Peterson, instead use the power of the pregnant pause.
