ritalin

[Maureen Anderson]

>
>The thing I don't like about any kind of attack is that it elicits 
>fear.  We animals seem to lose a good chunk of our mental capacity 
>when we're scared. The fight/flight adrenalin rush seems to take 
>over the brain, and all reason's lost.  I'm fairly well persuaded 
>that much of the reason we dislike being attacked by a superior is 
>that we hate like the devil to be pressed into, as it were, losing 
>our minds.

But we're talking about punishment of children, who might not have 
yet have this reasoning capacity which, as you say, feels so 
degrading to be frightened out of as an adults.

Of course this kids-just-don't-understand argument can be used to 
justify no end of vicious child abuse.  I don't think anyone would 
disagree.  But do you always find it an illegitimate argument?  For 
instance I've hung out in many villages where any kid old enough to 
walk knows they'll get slapped if they venture too close to a well. 
Sure, the adults can try to reason with them on the cause and effect 
of falling down a well, while trying to explain mortality, etc.  But 
to a three year old maybe the threat of a slap makes the more 
memorable impression.

Granted toddlers and wells is a melodramatic example.  But for the 
purpose of figuring out how you're putting this all together I guess 
melodrama's useful.  Because while you could jsut answer that village 
wells ought to be made child-proof, the point is that in some guise 
or other there will always be open wells.

I've got mixed feelings about all this and, product of my world, 
can't really imagine disciplining a kid by hitting.  But I agree with 
Wojtek that to designate a priori, regardless of context, all 
instances of corporal punishment as child abuse renders most of 
humanity for most of its history as pathological.

It's maybe no coincidence that the corner of the world that's made 
the most fuss about corporal punishment is also the part that most 
systematically drives a wedge between mental and physical force.  (As 
if a slap's physical pain can be extracted from its symbolical 
import, or that psychological disciplining doesn't take a material 
form or have embodied consequences.)  More importantly it's probably 
no coincidence that corporal punishment is recognized as so highly 
damaging in a milieu where the isolated body/self is so prominent, 
and becomes so at such a young age.

In fact most of my experiences of witnessing corporal punishment in 
rural West Africa (though far more frequently: the threat of corporal 
punishment) weren't towards one little kid, but towards a group of 
kids, whose transgressions were usually carried out as a group. 
Sometimes only one or a couple of the kids would get the slap, but it 
was meant for all of them.  Shared like that, I imagine those who 
felt the actual sting of the slap experienced something worlds apart 
from an isolated kid dealt a slap of identical force in some 
self-enclosed North American household.

These are hackneyed contrasts -- bourgeois US, rural West Africa -- 
but probably no more overdrawn than some sweeping assertions floating 
around about physical punishment, always and everywhere.


Maureen