We have come a long way from a time when violence against children and young people in the form of corporal punishment was widely acceptable. Studies of childhood remind us that infanticide in ancient Greece was not a crime. It was not until AD 374 that the Roman Empire outlawed infanticide. Many authors, among them Neil Postman (Disappearing Childhood), have drawn attention to the appalling treatment meted out to children in the family context in the Middle Ages. Today such treatment would undoubtedly be characterised as torture.
Since Locke and Rousseau there has been an emerging awareness of the special place of the child in society. Church groups and religious congregations have contributed in their own fashion to this developing awareness. Although, it has to be admitted, faith-based groups have not been in the forefront in the promotion of the ‘best interests’ of the child from a rights-based perspective. Many elements of a rights-based approach would still be contested by the churches and by some faith-based groups. At times the protection of the interests of the family have been seen to be in conflict with the need to protect the interests of the child.
Thankfully, we are now beginning to move towards a new appreciation of the need to extend greater protection to children and young people, not only in public contexts such as schools, prisons and youth centres, but also in the private context of the home.
Corporal punishment remains one of the contested areas. Most countries refuse to institute a legal ban against corporal punishment in the home. At the same time, however, most countries have outlawed corporal punishment in all other contexts: schools, prisons, juvenile centres.
This week the Committee for the Convention on the Rights of the Child issued its General Comment Number 8. It is a call for the wider extension of the prohibition of corporal punishment to the home and for the universal adoption of this prohibition by States parties. This call is a response to the research carried out by Professsor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the independent expert commissioned to coordinate the UN Report on Violence Against Children. A engaged and spirited debate of corporal punishment in the home is now a certainty. It is, however, a debate that is essential and timely if we are to address the issue of violence against children with integrity.
See CRIN webpage on General Comment 8
See also Save the Children, Sweden, Global Report 2008
I do not know how the Christian Brothers have the nerve to try to explain away corporal punishment in schools as in their article on this website of 22 October 2008 which I have only seen now.
The Christian Brothers were the most notorious practitioners of abusive corporal punishment in their schools in Ireland, where I saw it, and abroad, well in excess of what by state law was permitted. This was a great pity as damaging a teaching order founded by one who disapproved of corporal punishment.
Of course the same went for priest teachers as I know and saw; the connection between corporal punishment and sexual abuse was always denied but pretty obvious to anyone who experienced it at their hands. One has only to read the Ferns Report and the activities of a priest-teacher in St Peter’s College Wexford given the name ‘Father Epsilon’ to see the connection. The Church has always denied the abusive nature of corporal punishment, despite the findings of the Ferns Report and the Murphy Report, and always will. No wonder the Church is in a mess.
I don’t see how the article is attempting to ‘explain away corporal punishment in schools’ as John Kehoe suggests.
Yes the Christian Brothers have had a reputation for strong ‘discipline’ and of course there are instances where it has been excessive. There may also have been instances where there was a connection between corporal punishment and sexual abuse on the part of some mal-adjusted individuals.
On the other hand corporal punishment in schools is hardly restricted to the Christian Brothers or to Catholic schools for that matter.
Evidence I have read suggests that it was more common in (Protestant) northern Europe than in (Catholic) southern Europe for example.
Although it has largely disappeared from schools in the western world, although it is still legal in twenty (mainly southern) states in the US, corporal punishment in schools is still widespread in many African, Asian and the Middle Eastern countries.
As in former times in Ireland and elsewhere, the practice was largely supported by parents and by society as a whole because it was believed to be an efficient means of dealing with student misbehaviour and an effective incentive for students to learn. It disappeared as those assumptions were increasingly questioned and discredited.
The fact that Christian Brothers continued to beat students in opposition to the wishes of their founder Edmund Rice and in defiance of the expressed disapproval of several of their Superiors General says much about them and about their response to the vow of obedience to which they were bound.
Their track record in Artane and in Letterfrack, to mention but two of their institutions, will be a permanent testament to their brutality.
Of course they were not alone in this. I have acknowledged my own experience of priest-teachers who operated a similar regime but who should have known better.
The fact that corporal punishment is still practised in some Catholic high schools in some of the states in the US,
despite the Vatican being an early signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which expressly disapproves of corporal punishment in schools, again shows the cavalier attitude of Catholic institutions to State law and Convention which is now costing the Irish Church,among others,dear in terms of loss of faith and credibility.
Pointing to Protestant northern Europe for stronger evidence of corporal punishment, as Brian Bond does, scarcely excuses the practice by Christian Brothers,or by anybody else, nor validates the commonly-held notion which he acknowledges as discredited, that it was ‘an effective incentive for students to learn’.
Catholics,above all, claim to occupy the high moral ground, not least the Christian Brothers as I remember them, and two wrongs will never make a right.
Like Mr. Kehoe, I see this essay as a thinly disguised attempt to dilute criticism of past brutalities inflicted by members of this order on students in their care. By portraying the hitting of children as a debatable,discussable subject, and by implying that the verdict has not yet been rendered on the subject of hitting children, the orders shirk their moral obligation to apologize for their injustices to children and to assert clearly the need to protect children from being hit in the future, in school and in homes. Every developed nation in the world has now condemned and forbidden school corporal punishment,except the U.S. where a bill in Congress right ow would bring that country in line. And in over 25 nations, mostly in Europe, parental hitting is also prohibited, with movements underway in many more to do the same. Must the Catholic Church come in last in support of true Children’s Rights? Cannot these men at least read the U.N. Charter on the Rights of Children and agree to it? This essay is weak at best, morally repugnant at worst.