A rchive Date
[ 20-01-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/byfield.html
Spanking verdict was no victory
By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun
January 20, 2002
We took another stride last week in our tireless campaign to put behind us the Bad Old Days, meaning the world as it was before the 1960s.
It came with the "spanking" decision of the Ontario Court of Appeals, hailed by social conservatives as a magnificent victory, since the court upheld the right of parents to strike their children.
But, if you read the fine print, it was no victory. The court ruled that, while a parent may still spank a child over the age of two, he must do it only with his hand. A child under two may not be struck at all.
So if a toddler persists in pulling stuff of the stove, and the parents slaps his fingers, the parent has committed a crime. If a 14-year-old, sprawling on the couch, tells his father to go to hell, the father is allowed by law to spank his butt with the palm of his band.
If the kid's response is to smash the father in the face with his fist, the father's only recourse is to call in the police, who will call in the social workers, who will call in the counsellors. The state, once again, must come to the rescue of the family. Pretty soon we won't need the family, only the state.
The family, of course, was once central in most people's lives and the state marginal, but that was in the Bad Old Days.
You wonder: Is this replacement of the family by the state the real objective of an organization like the Canadian Foundation for Children Youth and the Law? They're the chief foes of "family violence," as they call it, and they deplored the Ontario court's decision because it still left some vestige of physical authority to the parent.
Yet each "right" they win "for the child" is inevitably a right transferred from the parent to the state. It's difficult to believe they aren't fully aware that what they are championing is not the child's rights but the state's. Or are they Marxists and don't know it?
In any event, what enables them to make progress is the public's unfailing rejection of the Bad Old Days. Even in the presentations of the conservative side, there was always the ritual disclaimer. While they were there to defend parental rights, they certainly weren't advocating that we go back to the Bad Old Days.
Why does no one ever ask: why not? What was so bad about the Bad Old Days? What actually was the lot of children in pre-1960s Canada?
Were children not beaten? Up to the teen years, we were certainly spanked, that's true. In school we were strapped. Quite frequently, in fact. In Grades 7 and 8 at Corcellette Road School in Toronto, somebody in the class got the strap pretty much every week, less frequently as the year wore on because the joy of the misdemeanor - talking in class, fighting in the schoolyard, cheating on tests, whatever - wasn't worth the stinging pain in the your palm.
We lived in a highly-structured environment. We marched into school in single file, boys and girls, to Souza band music. We stood when the teacher came into the class or whenever we answered a question. The teacher must always be Mr. So-and-So or Miss Such-and-Such. There were occasional schoolyard fights, always rapidly terminated with the belligerents being dragged into the principal's office and strapped. But rules governed even the fighting. You didn't attack from behind. You didn't hit a guy when he was down. And you never, ever hit a girl.
Tests in every testable subject were a weekly routine. Departmental examinations were set at Grades 9, 12 and 13, and the results in the last two published in the newspapers, however humiliating. While spanking was a disincentive, this was an incentive.
It's also noteworthy that juvenile crime was practically unknown, as was juvenile suicide, rampant bullying and - for whatever it's worth - single parenthood. The only other sense I remember from those days is one of safety. Strap or no strap, somehow we felt exceedingly secure. Adults were in charge and that was good.
Modern kids don't feel secure, and transferring parental authority to the state will only make things worse.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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