College Expels Student Who Advocated Corporal Punishment

[Mizmoon]

As a substitute teacher in the public schools here, Scott McConnell says students are often annoyed that he does not let them goof off in class. Yet he was not prepared for the sixth grader who walked up to his desk in November, handed in an assignment, and then swore at him.

The profanity transported him back to his own days at Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma in the 1980's, when there was a swift solution for wiseacres: the paddle.

"It was a footlong piece of wood, and hung on every classroom wall like a symbol, a strong Christian symbol," said Mr. McConnell, who is 26. "Nobody wanted that paddle to come down."

He said he had been a disruptive student, and routinely mouthed off until his fourth-grade teacher finally gave him three whacks to the backside. Physically, it did not hurt. But he felt humiliated and humbled.

"I never wanted that again," Mr. McConnell recalled. "It was good for me."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/nyregion/10paddle.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. If Mr. McConnell likes beating kids with wood so much...

Perhaps he wouldn't mind me whaling on him, for an hour or so, with my six-foot piece of hickory, about 1.5 inches in diameter and tapered at both ends. It has a name: rokushakubo. Google it up.

I promise that, at the end of the hour, something may be left unbroken. May.

Stupid faux-christian thug.

[alwynsw]

9. O.K.

So McConnel's in favor of corporal punishment and you want to beat McConnell with a stick for being in favor of beating people with sticks.

The logic of your reasoning escapes me.

I am not in favor of corporal punishment,

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

42. The child cannot defend against the adult.

I volunteer to do it for him. Effectively. Very.

[Bo]

34. spare the rod... spoil the child

[TommyO]

36. A TASER in every classroom

Heck, if it's good enough for the cops, it's good enough for a substitute teacher.

[immoderate]

2. Classroom executions are very effective.

Especially if you leave the body around as a reminder to potential offenders.

--IMM

[Bridget Burke]

3. "a strong Christian symbol"

A symbol of Christ, for whom flogging was part of his death by torture?

Why not a cat-o'nine-tails?

[Tempest]

18. Or a spear in the ribs?

That's a strong Christian symbol.

[The Magistrate]

44. Indeed, Ms. Burke

The Christian symbolism of the wooden paddle escapes me, and my knowledge on that subject is considerable....

[Demit]

4. He feels that a paddle is a Christian symbol?

--this "mild-mannered former private in the Army"? Then he can go study in one of the 22 states that still allows corporate punishment. It's against the law in New York, and against the college's mission to give credentials to someone who considers that following the law is being politically correct. Kudos to the Jesuit college for not renewing his registration!

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Not for nothing

But other religions often find it bizarre that the Christian symbol is a n instrument of torture (the cross). Several gnostic and heretical sects in early Christianity were also repulsed by the cross as a symbol for the "love of Christ." As an atheist who was brought up Catholic, I understand the use of the cross theologically...lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, etc., and, of course, culturally - crossed lines as symbolic of peoples being much older than the practice of crucifiction.

However, there's not really that big of a step from the cross (an instrument of punishment) to the paddle (an instrument of punishment).

[Demit]

15. 12 years of Catholic school here, too. Actually I think it's the Crucifix

--cross with a body nailed to it--other religions find ooky. And yeah, after I escaped the environment in which it was just always there so I never gave it much thought, I can see why. But isn't it interesting that it's Catholics (the Jesuits anyway) who are saying Hey, look, we have to be mindful of the law here... It's the evangelical Christians who want to drag their view of religion into the public sector.

I don't know what I think about corporal punishment. I saw plenty of it with the Sisters of St. Joseph--entire afternoons would be taken up with it, great entertainment for us kids then but in retrospect, uh, not really so good. Teachers need something to help them control kids, I guess, but... I think it's like tasers in the hands of police now: too easily abused. And the guy in this case--well, he's too quick to tie it to religion. That makes me suspicious.

[rpannier]

5. I have a serious problem with his expulsion

He wrote it in a paper. He did not actually paddle a student. He wrote in his paper that he believed it had a place. The school, I believe over-reacted. Also, according to the article, his teacher gave him an A-minus. The professor found the paper's points interesting, although the Professor disagreed with them. That's the way a University should be run. The Professor who oversees the program had him expelled. I believe she is out of line.

[w4rma]

8. It's a private school, they can do what they want.

This guy should remember that the next time the subject of charter schools comes up.

[rpannier]

11. Oh Please...

Three problems I have with your piece:
1. If he had written a paper on using marijuana which is ILLEGAL in NY State and had been expelled, you probably would have been outraged.
2. If I read you correctly, because it's a private school they should be able to set any rules they want. ANY rules.
3. They are NOT, I repeat NOT totally private. Because they accept government loans they are NOT free to set any policies they want. Check the Supreme Court decision involving Bob Jones University (circa 1984). By accepting Federal Aid Money they are not totally private.

[w4rma]

20. I'd be outraged, but not for the reason you've stated.

I'd be outraged at their backward thinking, but not because they enforced their backward thinking onto their private students.

Now I did not know that this particular school has accepted government loans. It doesn't mention that in this article. As far as I knew this school may totally supported by donations from their church's members.

Private schools do get ALOT of leeway in what they can do. And most of that leeway give them the legal ability to do some substandard work and to cut corners.

[rpannier]

45. My apologies

If I came across as pompous or "cheney-like" I do apologise. I should have been more respectful in my reply.
I agree with your reply to my reply.

[alwynsw]

12. Private Jesuit college at that.

Given their (Jesuits) history with corporal punishment, I'm surprised that the school didn't give him a medal and fire the department head.

[NashVegas]

14. The School Is Taking Responsibility

For the potential actions of someone who would use the knowledge and degree from that school, to carry out actions the school is philisophically opposed to.

Some people would call that integrity.

[hezekkia]

29. others would call it a witch hunt

he's not going to start paddling kids in his classroom-- one of the points of the article was that he was sad that he COULDN'T paddle the student who cursed him.

integrity my ass.

[JoFerret]

31. The school has a mission

and is to be commended for acting in a mission consistent manner (that is also consistent with the law of the state.)

[alwynsw]

6. This has been popping around the web for a couple of weeks.

I don't agree with corporal punishment.

I also have to strongly disagree with Leogrande's actions. Academic freedom, even when used to espouse ideas with which we disagree, is essential to a free society.

The idea of, "You disagree with some of our school psitions, therefore you cannot attend our school," is preposterous.

That being said, perhaps a public university would be a better fit for McConnell.

[tinonedown]

7. a 6th grader swore at him?

That is what is news in this story. If a 6th grader is swearing at an adult then paddling is the last thing we should be worried about.

[alwynsw]

13. Not as uncommon as you might think these days

It's one of the reasons my wife retired from teaching rather than stick it out a few more years. Thankfully, she had sufficient time in to receive her full pension.

Add that to the kid (2nd grade)who stabbed his teacher in the leg with scissors, requiring the teacher to get a few stitches in the emergency room, who came back from the principal's office with ice cream after the incident and you can see why she got out.

If you're curious, the teacher had to hang around until a sub arrived before she could go to the ER. No administrative staff (principal, vice principal, or counselors) would cover her class until a sub arrived, so she had to wait it out or violate state law for abandoning a classroom. It's that in parentis loco thing.

[Mizmoon]

16. I see too many people who hate kids go into teaching

Then they want to know why a 6th grader can find it within himself to curse at them.

[tinonedown]

22. I am out of the loop

It's been awhile since I was around a school enviroment. Is it really not uncommon? Cursing the teachers. And look what we pay them. That's just terrible.

[alwynsw]

24. Sadly, it's not uncommon

Not uncommon, but not all the time, either in any given school.

Short story:

Before my wife's retirement, sometime in 200/01 school year as I recall, I stopped by the school to pick her up at the end of the school day. I arrived about 15 minutes before the end of the day. Because the folks in the office knew me, I was allowed to go to her classroom where she introduces me to the class as Mr. X and sits me behind her desk. Important point: she kept her maiden name of Y. The kids did not know me from Adam. I'm just a guy in a suit visiting the classroom.

A kid got up and walked to the front of the room while my wife was illustrating a point on the board. He demanded to go to the bathroom. My wife said that class would be over in 3-4 minutes and that he should wait if he could. He stood there and flipped her off! (I later learned that he was a problem. he was in the district alternative school within 2 weeks for violent and abusive behavior.)

All this occurred with a stranger in the classroom. Several of the kids thought I was an auditor or assistant supt. from the school board.

Granted, this kid had problems anyway, but my wife comfirmed that it happend to virtually all of the teachers in her school at one time or another.

BTW, my wife is far from disliking kids. To this day, we're still finding things around the house that she bought with her own money for class recreation and education. before the liability issues got so bad, we used to have entire classes to our place (in the country) to swim, play volleyball, cookouts, camp outs, etc.

Oh yeah. She taught in a rural school. No inner city or urban kids in the classes.

[DoNotRefill]

32. My wife had a three year old student tell her "fuck you"....

while working as a preschool special ed teacher.

[quaoar]

17. The expulsion was not justified

The school should reinstate him and apologize.

Doesn't matter whether you agree with him about corporal punishment. This is a issue of free speech and academic freedom.

Sometimes you have to defend the rights of those you disagree with, because today they might come for them but tomorrow they might come for you.

[Tempest]

19. Is he a closet racist?

In an interview, Mr. McConnell said he disliked "anti-American multiculturalism,"


That sure sounds suspicious to me.

[Viking12]

25. Oh, the irony

The xenophobe prefers a monocultural America but is trumpeting his rights for diverse expression :wtf:

[Misunderestimator]

21. He seems to have forgotten it was TWO pieces of wood that make

a christian symbol. Yikes! A PADDLE? A Christian symbol?!? Sounds like he might have liked it a bit much himself... I wonder if he keeps his own personal paddle at home to perform his mea culpas.

[lynne]

23. Wasn't it just last week -

- that posters were defending Ward Churchill for what he had to say on a college campus?? He was a professor, no less, and not a student.

How can we protest the squashing of free speech in an academic setting on behalf of Churchill yet not for McConnell??? I don't understand how we could feed McConnell to the dogs for exercising the same rights that we are willing to defend Churchill for.

[alwynsw]

27. Good point.

Too often we see on this board and elsewhere:

"I'll support your right to say or believe anything you want (but only if you agree with me.)"

[hezekkia]

28. well said.

people here are frickin' hypocrites sometimes. I'd think we could be SOMEWHAT better than the freepers. :shrug:

this guy was expelled from a university program for expressing his belief. Sure, I don't agree with what he wrote, but so what?! It's not like he advocated genocide or something. Academic dialogue should be promoted if we don't want to become a nation of fascists. (if we aren't already!!) As Justice Powell once said, the solution to bad speech is to have more speech. Remember when people were expelled for writing pro-communist papers? apparently some people haven't learned the lessons of mcCarthyism.

[Viking12]

30. Let's see...

our "victim" has a history of violence against children, advocates violence against children, and is in training to take a teaching license where it seems pretty likely to again use violence against children.

This case isn't as cut and dried as a "free speech" and certainly we don't have the whole stroy. The University is likely prohibited by the Buckley Amendment from divulging inforamtion about the "victim". The reason it is getting so much publciity is because it fits well with the RW Wurlitzer's theme of persecution by the vast left-wing conspiracy in the academy. Perhaps we should be a little more sceptical of McConnel's claims.

[lynne]

35. He has a "history" of violence against children ?? -

- I'm sure we read the same article but I didn't get that out of it. I read he was paddled in school as a child but that is a far cry from having a "history of violence against children". Most everyone age 45 and over were in school when corporal punishment was the norm and probably quite a few were intimate with the paddle. I doubt that it kept any of them from becoming teachers.

My opinions are only based on what story we do have. That story is not vastly different from Churchill's in the respect that both wrote about a violent act in an approving manner. One is a professor and the other wishes to become a teacher. Yet we defend the one under the guise of "freedom of speech" and ridicule the other.

I just wonder . . . if the fact that the word "Christian" appeared in the article has anything to do with the difference in opinion between the two all-too-similar situations?

[Viking12]

38. Mea Culpa. Nevertheless I stand by my points.

I read quickly and sloppily and understood our "vicitm" to be the aggressor in the opening scene. So no history of violence of which we are aware. My bad.

Nevertheless, my points stand. He advocates violence against children and he wants to teach children. Red flag.

This situation and the Churchill situation are not at all analogous. Churchill teaches adults. Our "vicitm" wants to teach children. Churhill wasn't advocating violence. Our "victim" is.

Again, there is a well-funded effort to publicize the stories of "christians" and conservatives being persecuted by the "radical left-wing academy". Most of the stories don't hold up when exposed to the light. Don't buy into their stories of persecution so readily.

[hezekkia]

54. "violence against children"

I don't advocate corporal punishment in schools, but I know reasonable people who don't have a problem with it-- mostly people who grew up w/ a paddle or ruler in the classroom.

to call this violence against children is an exaggeration to the umpteenth degree. you act like he wants to beat the shit out of kids for no reason. my problem w/ corporal punishment is that I think a parent should be able to decide how best to discipline their child-- but I would hardly call a parent who (reasonably) spanks a child an abuser, and I certainly wouldn't call that kind of punishment "violence against children." That simply makes light of a problem that is quite serious indeed.

--one who was spanked and turned out ok.

[delilah]

26. This dude is a twit

but he shouldn't be expelled from a program for espousing an opinion about corporal punishment. His expulsion is wrong and should be reversed. Academics are already under attack, this is perpetuating a trend that needs to be stopped.

That said, I wouldnt hire him, I'd take issue with any public school that did, and god HELP him if he touched one of my kids. I guarantee you that my paddle is bigger than his, and I only use it on stupid-ass adults that mess with kids.

[msanthrope]

40. I agree completely with your post...n/t.

[ebayfool]

52. He wasn't just espousing an opinion about corporal punishment.

This was asking @ classroom planning, & he had alot to say @ the 'paddle', multiculturalism (he views as anti-american & anti-christian), scoffed at nurturing students' self-esteem, ad nauseum. I just don't see this as a simple free speech/academic freedom case. This guy was saying what he saw as a good plan to run a classroom, & declaring his right to do so because of his fundie beliefs.

my opinion of his opinion?

snip/
"... the assignment sought Mr. McConnell's plan for managing a classroom."

/snip
...graduate education schools might face a threat to their accreditation, or legal action by school districts, if they produce teachers who fall into trouble.

/snip
He also said that because he is an evangelical Christian, his views about sparing the rod and spoiling the child flowed partly from the Bible, and that Le Moyne was "spitting on that."

[AnneD]

33. OK, forgive me but this reminds me of a joke one of my students told me

There was a kid that was doing poorly in his classes and eventually was expelled. His parents decided to place him in a parochial school. When he received his first report card, his parents were ecstatic. They rushed up to the school to speak with the principal. They ask him what he did to turn their son around. He said he didn't recall even seeing their son in his office. Curiosity aroused he called the boy into his office. When the son came in the principal said that his parents and he were proud of how well the boy was doing and wanted to congratulate him. "I just have one question," the principal asked, "you use to make bad grades. Why are you doing so well now." " Well," said the boy, "on my first day in school, I walked into the school and saw that student that you nailed to those 2 boards on the wall and I knew you meant business."
We don't have corporal punishment here in our large urban school, but we did have it in the small rural county. Parents signed a waiver if they wanted to opt out. In the 4 years I was there, it was only administered in the elementary 3 time, twice on the same child (he truly was ... challenging). It was the last option, not the first.

[Trillo]

37. Teacher wants to paddle students:

Students denied right to paddle teachers.

Any hypocrisy there?

[bunkerbuster1]

39. "Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma"

good god...

[Mithras61]

41. Ummm.... minor quibble here...

He wasn't "expelled" but rather he was being evaluated for full admission over the summer/fall semesters, and was declined full admission based on interviews with his professors and a review of his academics....

http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/state/index.ssf?/base/news-2/110621404217660.xml

[artemisia1]

46. Thank you.

There are always TWO sides to every story, aren't there? Still, had it been simply a matter of advocating corporal punishment, I would prefer that he had been kept on. Personally, I am opposed to it but as it is still legal (and practiced) in a number of states, he was within his free speech rights, IMHO.

[proud2BlibKansan]

49. Check out what he wrote in his essay

"I do not feel that multicultural education has a philosophical place or standing in an American classroom, especially one that I will teach. I also feel that corporal punishment has a place in the classroom and should be implemented when needed."

"The classroomenvironment would revolve strictly around the American culture and the state culture, not multicultural learning," he wrote. He defined multicultural learning in an interview as the notion that a student's native culture should take precedence over American culture.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

43. This is NOT a free speech issue. It was a private college not a public

college. Private colleges are allowed to have their own dogma and accept people according to that dogma.

[depakid]

47. Unfortunately, that point that seems lost on many

Had this student been enrolled in Liberty "college" or Bob Jones "university" and written a paper advocating some comparatively minor point, he'd have been expelled in a NY minute.

While I don't necessarily agree with the decision here (though I would question the man's fitness to teach secondary school) it's not a front page issue- EXCEPT THAT it's provocative and transparently published as evidence to support charges of "discrimination" against so called "conservatives."

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

48. They should have just beat the shit out of him

since it was in line with his values

[alwynsw]

51. Beat me with a teacup. PLEEEEEASE!!!!!!!!!

edit: Hi from both of us! O.K. it stared with ,"Tell her Jo says, Hi!."

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

53. *bops on head with teacup*

howdy stranger! :hug: to you and Jo :D

[proud2BlibKansan]

50. But if they accept ANY federal aid

they have to abide by federal anti-discrimination laws. Most colleges have federal financial aid available for students. And many private schools have received federal grants for various programs.

No, I don't think this kid has a case for discrimination. But private schools are not always free to do whatever they want.

[The Animator]

55. Actually I think a paddle is an ancient Greek symbol...

Didn't any of you watch Animal House?

Thank you sir may I have another.

[Swamp Rat]

56. A dozen times!

Toga! Toga! Toga! :D

[dsc]

57. This is a text book example of why vouchers are such a bad idea

This college is morally wrong but not legally wrong to have expelled this student for his opinions. Shame on them and if they are getting government funds maybe the tap should be turned off. But they have every right to do this provided they aren't feeding at the public trough.

[Viking12]

58. He wasn't expelled

He was denied admission into a graduate school becasue he wasn't a match with their philosophy. It happens everyday.