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Corporal Punishment And Its Usage

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Introduction The topic of whether or not parents and teachers should use corporal punishment in the name of discipline had caught my eye for several reasons. One of the most important reasons is that I was beaten by a wooden paddle while I was growing up. I was about 12 years of age when my teacher beats all of my classmates including me just because one of us was misbehaving. That was in Baghdad, Iraq, where teachers and parents are allowed to use corporal punishment freely without any fear. Another reason is that I was born in a Catholic well-educated family that showed me what love and respect actually is. Hence, my parents didn’t accept what that teacher did and went to tell on her. They thought that a teacher should never do any kind of physical harm to their children, even if they used to do so. Therefore, I chose this topic to read more about corporal punishment and its usage in the United States. The key terms that are important in this paper are defined to give a full understanding of the issue. The term corporal punishment is defined as “the act of disciplining a child through physical means” (“Corporal Punishment”, 2006, p.1). However, there is a legal definition that most states use, which says, “Parents are allowed to use reasonable force in physically disciplining their children” (“Corporal Punishment”, 2006, p.3). Later on, I will also talk about the effective ways of disciplining a child that is nonphysical methods. One of them is “timeouts” which is

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