“The beatings will continue until morale improves” is a rather familiar quip of unknown origin. Two recent news stories remind of just how apt the saying remains. The first was an astonishing New York Times report on the reinstitution of paddling as a disciplinary tool in a Missouri school district. Surprisingly, paddling children in school remains legal in 19 states, although the practice is not widespread. Paddling children is barbaric, humiliating and utterly ineffective. Corporal punishment makes children more aggressive and disruptive. The Missouri abusers attempt to mitigate their own cruelty by saying they only whack kids whose parents give permission. It takes little imagination to understand why a child of such parents would have difficulty in school and draw more negative attention.
I don’t know when universal classroom instruction began, but the “progressive” method you describe is the way it was done for millennia (albeit very unequally, depending on your position in society.) So it’s really the “conservative” method, if that word means “the old way.”
I don’t know when universal classroom instruction began, but the “progressive” method you describe is the way it was done for millennia (albeit very unequally, depending on your position in society.) So it’s really the “conservative” method, if that word means “the old way.”