Banning corporal punishment in schools while protecting teachers and administrators from threatening lawsuits sounds good to many legislators, but several people spoke against the attempt Monday, saying sparing the rod spoils not only the child but the school environment as well.
House Majority Assistant Whip Christine Fox, R-Lehi, believes corporal punishment - a spanking or a rap across the knuckles with a ruler - is outdated and unnecessary.Her bill would require school districts to come up with ways to deal with disruptive children without such measures and require that parents who have complaints about how their children are treated in the schools go first to the school administrators, not to court.
After a long hearing on her bill, a House committee forwarded it to the House floor - where a year ago a similar measure failed. Fox predicts success this time.
But some don't like it. Paster Mark T. Short of the Berean Baptist Church - which also operates a private school - said the King James Bible teaches appropriate, constructive corporal punishment. In fact, he considers it a mandate from God. Short said he neither favors nor tolerates child abuse but said children must be taught proper principles and corporal punishment has its place.
"Without discipline in classroom, education can't take place," he said. He has a stick which on rare occasions is used on children. "But they never see it. We don't carry it around. Often their parents come in (to the school) and either administer the punishment themselves or are present when we do."
Fox and a number of supporters of her bill said it is simply a bad role model for an adult to hit a child and then attempt to teach the child that it is wrong to settle problems with physical force.
"The time of swatting kids in school has passed us by," she said. "How hard do you hit a child to make a point?"