Right alongside news that the UN Human Rights Commission, finding nothing else worthy to crack down on, has upheld its ban on dwarf tossing (even when dwarves want to be tossed), the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, having realized that child slavery, child prostitution, child labor, and all the other rights abuses of children worldwide have been rectified, is chastising Britain for allowing corporal punishment in the home.
The committee said it “deeply regrets that (Britain) persists in retaining the defense of ‘reasonable chastisement’ and has taken no significant action toward prohibiting all corporal punishment of children in the family.” The committee had asked Britain to overturn the law in 1995.
Government proposals to limit but not abolish the provision do not comply with the 1989 convention and are a “serious violation of the dignity of the child,” the committee said.
I’m not sure that “dignity” and “child” belong in the same sentence, but perhaps I’m nitpicking.
“Moreover, they suggest that some forms of corporal punishment are acceptable and therefore undermine educational measures to promote positive and non-violent discipline.”
“We’re not saying children shouldn’t be disciplined,” [Committee Chairman Jacob Doek of the Netherlands] said. “But it’s not necessary to hit them over the head or kick them.”
One of the forms of a Cognitive Distortion is all-or-nothing thinking, and we see a fabulous example of it here. Doek seems to be arguing that either kids are being “hit over the head or kicked” or else subject to only positive and non-corporeal punishment. There is no middle ground, no grey area, no integrated use of both praise for good behavior and negative disincentive (a swat on the butt, a flick of the ear lobe) for wrong behavior. It’s all distilled into black-or-white, either walloping the child bloody (Wrong-Thought) or teaching them with positive, dignified, incorporeal, “non-violent” lessons (Right-Thought).
Feh.
SDB has a better commentary than I. In the meantime, I can only wonder how many of Mr. Doek’s children survived to adulthood without running into the street, and how they’re doing now.
Anyone who thinks I defend true violence against children can come right here and say that to my face (at which point true violence might erupt). Anyone who thinks that I think I know all the answers to child discipline is flat wrong.
But anyone who thinks they’ve got all the answers — whether those answers are beat-em-till-they-obey or pat-em-on-the-head-till-they-obey — is equally deluded.