Two blogs, On the Main Line and DovBear, have recently expressed their disapproval with respect to Agudath Israel’s reservation about proposed NY State legislation that would require parochial schools to report abusive teachers. I can certainly understand their point of view. Who, after all should we protect the abusers or the children?!
Child abuse is an easy issue to get upset about. Corporal punishment has long ago been abandoned by our society as abusive and probably for good reason. There are some teachers who can in a moment of rage severely beat a child putting him at risk of serious injury or even death.
Who wouldn't be in favor of throwing a child abuser into a vat of poisonous snakes? At a minimum we should be supportive of legislation designed to protect innocent children by requiring clergy to report abuse to the authorities. But something has been lost in the rush to protect our children from such abuses. Corporal punishment is quite effective if used properly.
I had one such teacher in elementary school (in the fifties) and he was one of the best teachers I ever had. His name was Shmuel Kaufman, a young man barely in his twenties. He was like a loving father and we all wanted his approval. When we acted up in class he would show his disapproval by calling us up to the front of the class, grabbing our wrists with one hand and smacking the back of our hands with the other. It stung. And it worked. We had tremendous admiration for this Rebbe because we knew he loved us. And we respected his mode of punishment.
And he showed his love by dedicating hours of his time out of the classroom to our welfare. He single-handedly created the Thursday night Mishmor at our day school and fostered an environment of fun and enjoyment that we all looked forward to every week. He picked us all up in his old beater of a car, stuffed about 10 or 12 kids into it and would race it down the street to see how fast he could go before he hit the stop sign. Dangerous? Maybe. No one was ever hurt, though and it is a fond memory that I cherish to this day. After Mishmor, he would take us all bowling.
I credit him with saving countless young Neshamos day after day... year after year. Most of the children from that era were children of recently arrived immigrant holocaust survivors, many of who were severely tested and came out not as committed to Yiddishkeit as they once were. They were very tempted to not only forget their holocaust experiences but to forget their Yiddishkeit as well and just allow their kids to assimilate in to the American public school system. It was tough getting them into a day school. Once there it was a formidable task keeping them there. The draw of the outside world and the parents desire to assimilate their kids was very powerful.
But the Shmuel Kaufmans of the world did not let that happen. He held on to us and in the vast majority of cases those children became Shomrei Torah uMitzvos, many of whom became Bnei Torah and have their own children and grandchildren who are now the very Bnei Torah who populate Yeshivos like Mir, Lakewood, Ner Israel and YU.
I am not advocating a return to corporal punishment. The dangers of abuse outweigh its benefits. But I can’t help thinking that if it were still in use our children would benefit the same way my generation did. In the right hands with proper guidelines it is a very effective tool. I used corporal punishment on my own children and used the exact same technique as Rabbi Kaufman. It worked. It is fast, painful, effective ... and safe... as long as it isn’t done in anger and you hit only the back of the hand.
One might think that Rabbi Kaufman would have been the first person to be fired from his job during the era that corporal punishment was “discovered” to be cruel and unusual punishment for school children (as it definitely turned out to be in some cases). He wasn’t. He stopped using that method of discipline. Not only did his career not end, he still teaches in the same elementary school to this day.
