[lit-ideas] Re: On Killing Kids

  • From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:50:23 -0500

I am truly, truly sorry that happened to you, and to the rest of the kids.  
Unfortunately, the South probably is closer to what the rest of the world is 
really like. 

Your incident with the two year is exactly why parenting needs to be taught 
ahead of time.  How many people know that the two's are when the child begins 
to individuate?  It's a two-year-old child's job to test limits, strike out on 
their own for the first time, find out who they are, while making sure mom and 
dad are safely around.  Instead, most people do what you did when the kid 
begins to assert the "I" (and probably what I would have done if I had had 
kids), which is get mad at the child for doing what he/she was designed to do.  
How much regret this would save by knowing things like this ahead of time, 
being prepared, role playing, doing scenarios.  This could be taught, should be 
mandatory, in the high schools around the world, and yet, so incredibly sadly, 
it will never happen.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mike Geary 
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 2/16/2006 10:30:53 PM 
Subject: [lit-ideas] On Killing Kids


For Andy's information:  all the Southern states allow corporal punishment to 
this day.  The Memphis City Schools disallowed corporal punishment this year 
for the first time.  The South loves beating the shit out of people.  It's just 
our way, a cultural convention.  The more defenseless the victim, the more we 
love it.  I'm sure there's a dissertation in that, but not for me.  I have too 
many scars.  For my part, my mother would make us go pick the switch we were to 
be switched with -- is that cruel or what?  But we knew it meant little.  My 
Dad never touched us in anger -- but, of course, he was always away at work.  
However, when I was 13 or 14 and got into some trouble, my Dad just said, "I'm 
very disappointed in you".  Nothing before or since has been so devastating or 
corrective.  

I once spanked my first child when in the recalcitrance of the terrible twos 
she refused to stay in "time out".  I've never hated myself so much as after 
that.  I never raised my hand in anger or discipline against her or the 
following two again.  Violence teaches violence, that's all it ever teaches.  

The last year I taught, 1986 -- I had decided to return to teaching, to do 
something more significant with my life than making the world safe for 
machinery, I ran into contemptuous and angry antagonism from the rest of the 
faculty at the school because I refused to resort to corporal punishment -- 
actually what I wanted was capital punishment for my students, I would daydream 
about pulling a pistol from my desk drawer and shooting the smart-aleck little 
shits.  "Who's next?" I'd ask.  Ah, Clint Eastwood -- the faculty thought I was 
undermining their whole system of discipline.  They wanted me out.  They got 
their wish.

When I was in high school -- 1958 - 1962 at Catholic High School for Boys in 
Memphis -- whippings were common -- Father Vere would give five licks to anyone 
in his classes who didn't go to the weekly football game -- no excuses -- I 
swear to God that's the truth.  But that was kid's stuff.   I'll never forget 
the beating I saw a kid get from Father Oglesby, I have no idea what caused it, 
but I saw it, saw a man 30 year older than the 15 year old boy he had pinned 
against the lockers and was slugging in the face over and over again in full 
view of everyone, blood all over the place.  That man was sick, this wasn't 
about discipline, this was some anger deep within him that he released by 
violence against someone with no ability to strike back.  And so was Father 
Vere's. even if less damaging.  So was mine against my first child.  I've 
decided within my world view that hitting another person is a sickness.  And 
the societies that approve of it or just accommodate it are sick soc
 ieties.  

But then I was a bad teacher.  I could never maintain discipline in a classroom.

But then I never wanted to.  I wanted to escape the classroom, take my students 
through some underground railroad to a land where love and learning were 
synonyms.

But then I fell in love with air conditioning.  :  )

Don't hit, Christ, they'll just hit someone in return.

Mike Geary
undisciplined
in Memphis   

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