Corporal punishment

Message / Question

Sorry if someone has posted this before - is there a way to search for previous posts? Anyway: what are your thoughts on corporate punishment?

Response

Re old posts. There is a link to older posts on the site but I don’t that it’s a search facility as such.

I presume that you mean corporal punishment, so I’ll go there first. In Proverbs we read that whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. I believe that some corporal punishment is appropriate – but it should be administered by parents (and, in my view, school teachers) and in a measured way. The problem is that some people abuse corporal punishment and it becomes genuine child abuse, and that is absolutely unacceptable. Previous generations were raised by parents who used corporal punishment and, in my view, most came out with a better appreciation of love, discipline and respect than that which I see generally in the current generation – a generation raised by parents who themselves, were generally disciple lightly or hardly at all. I suggest that corporal punishment is an inappropriate form of discipline to be used by the State.

If the question is actually about “corporate” punishment (implying that the corporate body – i.e. everyone together – is punished for the offence of one member of that body) then it becomes an issue with a very wide base. For example, should a sporting team all be punished because one or two members of the team say were drug cheats or the administrators abused a salary cap etc? This is a very complex issue which, in principle can be absolutely justified yet it can see the innocent punished for offences that they did not commit. As a general principle I would find such punishment justified, but I would consider that each case would need to considered on its own individual merits.