Anyway that’s it from me. I did agree with you on your post on Tiger Woods — somewhere around comment 2580. So I look forward to finding agreement with you again somewhere around comment 5000. In the meantime — Scott out.

I would agree that general parenting is more important than corporal punishment on its own. However corporal punishment enables parents and teachers to maintain their authority. It enables parents to teach good values and discipline because the children know that there is a boundary which they can’t cross. It enables teachers to maintain discipline so that they can actually teach something.

It is breathtaking to me how radical and destructive this whole idea is. Children can now say to their parents — you can’t touch me. Students can assault the teachers with impunity. Teachers cannot physically defend themselves because they know they will be charged with assault. There has to be a better way and there is.

Is physical punishment the key factor? Or is it general parenting that is more important?

Anyway — once again — there is a vast difference between normal parental discipline administered in the context of a married loving family and the bash which you are talking about. Smacking is — once again — particularly commended in the Bible, because if we don’t do it then we will spoil our children. Our children will go bad and become smart Alecs who do not listen to their parents and do not even respect them.

We can see this today. Spend any time with many young people around town and you will hear swearing, cursing each other and other bad behaviour. Our children are becoming young Barbarians in my view.

What is the solution? Part of the solution is to reintroduce what we know works and is right. So therefore my recommendation would be to reintroduce section 59 as it was, where a jury can decide if the force used was reasonable or not, in the relatively few cases where police prosecute parents. I would go further to reintroduce corporal punishment in schools.

Interestingly enough our society would become less violent. That is because once we reintroduce proper authority then teenagers and children will know their boundaries and respect them. So we will see less violence in schools and less violence in society in general.

Huh?

Mike, it’s idiots like Latta that give your profession a bad name.

All the above (with Ryan) applies to you too.

Being beaten and mangaled by an abusive parent is NOT the same as being disciplined by a loving parent.
YOU know this as does Ryan

Intention was the case then as it is now.
there is a big (read enormous) difference between an inadvertent bump in the street and a parent giving their child a smack on the bum because the child needs it.

But then you know this and that’s why you get a red card for being daft.

John Key once compared it to speeding – if you do 51 km/hr in a 50 km/hr zone that is breaking the law, but you won’t get pinged.

As many have stated previously the law is bad law and is criminalising parents for physically disciplining their own children. Interestingly enough the rate of assaults in schools has gone up markedly this year. I think teenagers have got the message that no one will do anything to them and they can misbehave with impunity.

So I am with David with regard to changing the law. However I would return to section 59 as it was, including the right of schools to have corporal punishment if they so choose. I believe our children’s behaviour will improve markedly through this measure and we will become a less violent society. At the moment we are becoming more violent in large part due to our previous government’s foolish utopian measures.

Is it trespassing to step on someone’s lawn without their permission?

I think you’re missing the point, Ryan, or being deliberately obtuse.
And I think you’re wrong.

This law basically sends, especially, kids the message that you can break some laws/rules in certain situations.
Once again, we’re headed towards increasingly a ‘morally relativistic’, or ’situational ethics’ type of reason base. There are no longer any absolutes, and we can just make the rules up, or change the rules, as and when required. How parents are to instill right and wrong in their kids minds is anybody’s guess. And as a result our future looks increasingly bleak.

It was already the case that people don’t get arrested or charged for technical breaches of the law. If you bump into someone on the street, that is technically a crime. If you step on someone’s lawn while walking down the street, that is technically a crime. You grew up in a New Zealand where it was practical and necessary for people to not be arrested for breaking those laws. Did you turn out badly as a result of this crazy uncertainty?