What is corporal punishment?
Monday October 16, 2006
To a reader’s request for a definition of corporal punishment, Alice Miller wrote:
To me, corporal punishment is as much as injuring, attacking, offending, beating the body of another person and pretending that this act of aggression is aimed “for his good”. It is then called spanking, educating etc. This kind of violence towards children contains a lie because a child doesn’t learn anything good in a state of fear; it learns only to use violence in adulthood. Beating or spanking a child contain also a big danger because the brain of a small child is use-dependent; its experience becomes later its structure and to regard violence as good and normal becomes ingrained and self-evident. To me, so-called corporal punishment is nothing else than disguised CHILD ABUSE. More information can be found at the rich and interesting web-site www.nospank.net where its director Jordan Riak provides a lot of material and a very informative booklet.