Date: Sunday, November 8th 2015

Participants (from 11 countries):

Host: Marwa

Moderator: Johny

Teams

Panel PRO: Jay, Noorola, Mykaela, Johny

Panel CON: Imad, Sunita, Masato, Masoud, Reneesh

Audience: Finda, Marwa, Lala, Seif, Amy

Important clarification of the topic:

In this case, we were not talking about hitting a child in the head; it is not beating with closing fists, torturing them or similar because that is child abuse and that was not our topic. The Physical punishment we were addressing is for example spanking them in their bottom. Having said that, let’s read the summaries:

Panel PRO:

When a child is yet learning the language, they do not understand words and thus they may better understand by other means.
It is important to teach children discipline and most children only understand after being punished.

When parents cannot control their children by talking or applying psychology, corporal punishment becomes the last effective resort.
Parents feel bad after inflicting some physical punishment but after the child gets it for the first time, parents only have to “threat” to do it again and the child will obey because he or she will not want to be hit again. This proves that this method, even though is not advisable, is effective.
If we read carefully the topic, it says “is an effective method”; it neither says the best method, nor the only method, nor the ideal method nor the optimal method, nor that we all should do it, nor that it doesn’t bring any negative consequences nor that should it always be done. It says IS an EFFECTIVE method, which means, it works.
Even though it is not a best way, it does give the desired result; which can be to make the child stop misbehaving.
It is a technic which should be administrated only be parents who are not emotionally unbalanced.
It is not advisable for parents who cannot control their temper or tend to lose patience very easily.
The act of corporal punishment itself is different across parents.
Corporal punishment on its own does not teach children right from wrong, rather, it can be used in combination with complementary techniques.
Parents vary in how frequently they use it, how forcefully they administer it, how emotionally aroused they are when they do it, and whether they combine it with other techniques. Each of these qualities of corporal punishment can determine which processes are used.
Furthermore, studying the true effects of corporal punishment requires drawing a boundary line between punishment and abuse.

Panel CON:

It can work but have negative and long term consequences..
Parents can obtain more effective methods from books about children’s psychology.
Physical tactics bring negative consequences: Children learn things from their parents by imitating them including becoming physical with others because they think it is ok.
There are better ways to address a child’s misbehavior, such as positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
Another positive way to make a child understand is by being his or her friend.
When you inflict a physical punishment on your child, you are doing more than just making him or her stop. You are also inflicting fear into their hearts. This can cause a permanent negative effect in his or her psyche.
Even though it is important to discipline your children, you may make more progress if you just keep a positive and friendly home environment.
One member proposed one alternative method: Keeping a score of how many good things and how many bad thing the child did. In the end of the arranged period, you can count the good things the child did and reward him or her with a gift.
A child needs to learn "why" bad behavior is "bad" and this cannot be accomplished by inflicting fear through corporal punishments. In fact, after a physical punishment, they start acting out of fear and this makes them lose the opportunity to reason, to understand the why.

Audience summary:

Masato voted for team A
Lala voted for team B
Marwa voted for team B
Amy voted for Team B
Seif voted for team B
Finda left early.

Team B won this debate, congratulations!

There was a bonus chat after the debate and the topic was: “If you were nominated for Person of the world, how would you sell yourself to win?” This would be posted in a separated blog.

Thanks everyone for participating. To listen to this debate, click on the links below:

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Corporal (physical) punishment is an effective method to discipline a child | November 8th 2015 | Recording file

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