In a small move back toward common sense, the Florida Board of Education is considering giving teachers the right to use “reasonable force” to control unruly students.

When I consider the topsy-turvy world we live in, I can’t help but think of the Bible’s warning, “There will come a time when bad will be called good and good will be called bad.” A prime example of this is adult-child relations. In a reversal from a couple of generations ago, a child can strike an adult and it’s sometimes shrugged off, but if an adult disciplines a youngster corporally, the police may come a-knockin’. (By the way, if society would arrest someone for using physical force against a minor based on the supposition that it isn’t a proper remedy for intransigence or misbehavior, why do the authorities use same against the suspect if he resists arrest? Can’t they just reason with him or give him a time-out?) The thinking, I suppose, is that adults should know better. They certainly should: they should know that such permissive ideas do violence to our capacity to civilize the young.

Ah, “But, Duke,” some will say, “how can you civilize children by teaching them violence?” It’s not a good point but an excellent question, as it brings up one of the great myths of our time, that “violence has to be taught.”

This is one of those thoughtlessly-parroted modern dogmas. It sounds quite enlightened. Yet, if it were true, I’d have to wonder, does crying in front of children teach them how to bawl?Does sending them to their room teach them to hold others against their will? Does making them do chores teach them to press others into involuntary servitude?Have we ever heard of motivation and context?

The notion that violence has to be taught can easily be dispelled by observing young children.When babies are angry, they tend to instinctively lash out. Why, a while back I spent some time with the parents of two little fellows and noticed that when the children were angry, they would sometimes bite each other.I also know of a family with a very truculent little toddler who has a penchant for pulling hair. Yet, no one had ever bitten them or pulled their hair, so where did they “learn” these behaviors?

The truth is that violence – which, mind you, may be defined as physical force used with the intention of causing harm or injury – is quite natural. And the only thing related to it that must be taught is when and how to use force morally. It’s much as with sex: people don’t need to be taught it, only that they must keep it within the proper context.

If we truly were to reject this principle, we couldn’t have martial-arts classes for children, a military and police forces, whose existence reflects the legitimate context of defense of self and the innocent. We also couldn’t respect a devoted soldier, or all those people who enjoy our admiration because, when necessary, they can exercise force expertly. The Lone Ranger and Zorro would be in the pillory.

There is an irony here, too. The very people who most strenuously espouse the learned-force doctrine also tend to strongly subscribe to evolution. Yet these two beliefs are incompatible, and I addressed this problem last year, writing:

Now, I'm not presently chiming in on the origin-of-life debate, but it occurs to me that, when viewed through the prism of evolutionary principles, nothing seems more preposterous than asserting that violence has to be taught. After all, the principle of survival of the fittest dictates that traits within certain individuals that maximize chances of survival will become prevalent in their species over time. And being able to use violence effectively allows you to defend against and subdue foes, both human and beast, thereby increasing survivability.

Speaking of beasts, hewing to evolutionary doctrine, many of the same people would say that man is merely another animal, a highly evolved one, of course, but an animal nonetheless.Yet, although the natural world is rampant with natural violence, they seem to believe that somehow, some way it's unnatural for the human animal to follow this natural course.

And what of the Christian perspective? Well, to understand violent instincts, it’s not necessary to reduce people to animals as long as we don’t elevate them to angels. Original Sin explains the problem quite nicely.

Yet there are reasons why ours is now a society that may arrest people for “aggressive touching”; one is that we are taught, and many of us have learned well, to have a gratuitous fear of physical contact. An example of this may be Florida parent Jane Lane, who was quoted by NBC-2.com as saying:

“I think it's probably not a good idea [allowing Fla. teachers to use force]. Whenever you have ‘reasonable’ as a standard, it's subject to individual interpretation, and you have all degrees of the spectrum, which just leads to some sort of abuse.”

Overlooked is that judgment comes into play no matter what the method of control or who is exercising it. As for the method, this is true whether or not it involves physical force. Punishment can only be effective if it induces some kind of pain, physical or emotional. And we know that psychologists – a set adamantly opposed to spanking – tell us that the latter can be worse than the former. Thus, if teachers cannot be trusted to judge what is reasonable because it can lead to abuse, and if bruised feelings can be worse than a bruised backside, how can they be allowed the recourse of any form of punishment?

This question has already been answered, which is why we’re starting to see police show up at schools to arrest 10-year-olds. Yet, we know that a few police officers sometimes use poor judgment or overstep their bounds, so why don’t we rob them of necessary coercive power as well? Some may respond, “Well, they’re the police,” but this is an attitude that only moves us closer to a police state. If the tools necessary to maintain order are stripped from parents, and teachers and others acting in loco parentis, and are only allowed to “the authorities,” who will be getting involved when those tools must be wielded, huh? Since order must always be maintained, this standard guarantees continual police intervention into our lives.

At the end of the day, we should ponder the last few decades and ask ourselves a question: Why does it seem that the more we resolve to not “teach our kids violence,” the more violent they become?

Some people just need a smack back into reality.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments