Corpun file 16564
Time, New York, 3 July 1972
Letters
Sir, "The Beaten Generation" does not give a correct picture of the paddling situation in Dallas.
Spankings in Dallas will increase for the same reasons that tornadoes have increased in Texas -- just better reporting of what has happened all along.
Neither is this as much a problem of integration as you implied. I am a student who has been spanked, in junior and senior high school, and it was not a racial problem. There was not a single black teacher or black student in my schools -- including myself, whom you referred to in your article as "another black student."
The problem is mainly one of control over students v. individual rights; it is difficult for students to have classes teaching democracy and due process and not have it practiced anywhere in their school lives.
DOUGLAS WARE
Dallas
Sir, Ban corporal punishment? It will be a sad day for both the teacher and the student when the student finds out his teacher is only a paper tiger.
BUD SHAW
Auburn, Calif.
Sir, My children recently attended school in a district where corporal punishment was frowned upon. The teachers were attempting to use psychology to solve all the problems. My children learned. They learned disrespect for their teacher and their fellow students.
They are now in a school where spanking is seldom used, but every student knows that it is a possibility. The classes are orderly, and they are learning the three Rs.
LEROY M. GAINES
Davis, Calif.
Sir, Re "The Beaten Generation" [June 12]. The most ridiculous aspect of corporal punishment is the way adults, in their usual presumptuous attitude toward child raising, actually think they are accomplishing something. The adult merely settles a temporary difficulty by exploiting the child's physical inability to defend himself. If kids deserve any sort of physical treatment in schools, then it is a pat on the back for withstanding the torture of classroom discipline, physical or not.
JOAN MALTESE
(Aged 16)
San Diego
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