Corporal punishment

I REFER to recommendations by the Committee on the Rights of The Child (FT 26/10) that Fiji totally prohibit corporal punishment.

This is an example of the slow grind to isolate parents from their children.

Over-reach is a word that comes to mind to describe these organisations that spring up like mushrooms and pontificate to parents on how to discipline their own children.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” might sound anachronistic and old-fashioned to these self-appointed progressives and social engineers but have they paused to note the slow and inexorable grind to the gutter that society is taking partly because of these leftwing ideologies permeating academia and foistered on society by the so-called progressives over the past 40 years. And when the products of their ineffectual and ill-thought out policies end up in prison because the “tree was not straightened out when young”, they just clutch on to another fad and form another committee singing a different tune.

Parents, family and society as a whole are left to pick up the pieces.

Discipline, hard work, honesty, respectfulness to all especially the elderly, generosity and being responsible for ones own actions are virtues never mentioned by these 2PCs (Politically Correct, Pontificating Committees).

How about for once they propose imperatives that actually support parents discipline their own children, ones that emphasise upon children responsiblity for their own actions as compared with always pushing for the rights of children.

I believe parents are facing a double whammy in that government via the education department has undermined the authority of the teachers to discipline children via corporal punishment or ejection from classroom or expulsion from the school.

Some children deserve one or all of the above. And now I believe these 2PCs are attempting to also snuff out whatever freedom that parents have within their own households to discipline.

I believe these 2PCs operate on the default thinking that most parents and teachers take pleasure in whipping their own children or children in their care.

It is true that some children will fall victim to overly abusive parents or teachers. But that is the exception rather than the rule and I would rather take my chances with the rights of teachers and parents to discipline my child with the rod (if that is called for) than these do-gooders who are actually wolves in sheepskins. Because I still have recourse to justice or corrective action if I, as a parent, see abuse.

Who do parents call to account for their child going off the rails due in a large part of their inability to discipline as they see fit because it has been criminalised.

MAREKO VULI Wainibuku Rd, Nakasi