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Punishment and Justice- A Performance Task Activity for English II

Essential Questions:

How does a society determine justice?

How do people learn from mistakes?

How do different societies view punishment?

Goal: To read and understand texts across genres that reflect multiple viewpoints on the same topic and to develop and express an opinion on the issue based on the evidence presented.

Role: You will assume the role of a student who has studied foreign countries that practice corporal punishment.

Audience: The superintendent and board of a Texas school district that is unsure about reinstating corporal punishment.

Situation: Corporal punishment is still permitted in 19 states within the U. S.. Texas is a state that still allows corporal punishments in schools and led the nation with over 50,000 children being hit in 2005-06. However, many school districts choose not to implement this practice.

Your challenge is to review all of the documents in the library and determine whether corporal punishment is an acceptable means of correcting behaviors. You must convince your audience of your position by using evidence from at least three of the resources in the document library.

Product:

You may write a letter, create a "point-counterpoint" blog with a partner, film a short PSA, or get another idea approved by your teacher to deliver your argument.

Library (See documents listed below or refer to Blendspace Link http://blnds.co/S NdorD ) :

Document A: “Time to Assert American Values” New York Times Editorial

Document B: Cruel and Unusual Punishment Cartoon

Document C: Facts vs. Opinions: School Corporal Punishment

Document D: Is Corporal Punishment Child Abuse? Video

Document E: Blog: "Bring Back the Lash"

Document F: Torture Cartoon

Document G: "Rough Justice" by Alejandro Reyes

Document H: Pro-Spanking Studies May Have Global Effect

http://blnds.co/SNdorD


Document A: “Time to Assert American Values” New York Times Editorial

Time to Assert American Values

Published: April 13, 1994

Singapore's founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, returned to a favorite theme yesterday in defending the threatened caning of Michael Fay, an 18-year-old American found guilty of vandalism. Western countries value the individual above society; in Asia, he said, the good of society is deemed more important than individual liberties. This comfortable bit of sophistry helps governments from China to Indonesia rationalize abuses and marginalize courageous people who campaign for causes like due process and freedom from torture. Western nations, it is asserted, have no right to impose their values on countries that govern themselves successfully according to their own values.

So, the argument goes, when Americans express outrage over a punishment that causes permanent scarring -- in this case, caning -- they are committing an act of cultural arrogance, assuming that American values are intrinsically superior to those of another culture.

There is a clear problem with this argument. It assumes that dissidents, democrats and reformers in these countries are somehow less authentic representatives of their cultures than the members of the political elite who enforce oppressive punishments and suppress individual rights.

At times like this, Americans need to remember that this country was also founded by dissidents -- by people who were misfits in their own society because they believed, among other things, that it was wrong to punish pilferage with hanging or crimes of any sort with torture.

These are values worth asserting around the world. Americans concerned with the propagation of traditional values at home should be equally energetic in asserting constitutional principles in the international contest of ideas. There are millions of acts of brutality that cannot be exposed and combated. A case like Michael Fay's is important because it provides a chance to challenge an inhumane practice that ought not to exist anywhere.

While this country cannot dictate to the Government of Singapore, no one should fail to exhort it to behave mercifully. President Clinton provided a sound example when he called for a pardon. Principled private citizens ought now to call for American companies doing business in Singapore to bring their influence to bear.

Our colleague William Safire is right to call upon American corporations with subsidiaries in Singapore to press President Ong Teng Cheong to cancel Mr. Fay's punishment. According to Dun & Bradstreet and the U.S.-Asean Council, some C.E.O.'s and companies in this category are: Riley P. Bechtel of the Bechtel Group Inc.; John S. Reed of Citicorp; Roberto C. Goizueta of the Coca-Cola Company Inc.; Edgar S. Woolard Jr. of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company; Lee R. Raymond of Exxon Corporation; John F. Welch Jr. of the General Electric Company; Michael R. Bonsignore of Honeywell Inc.; Louis V. Gerstner Jr. of the International Business Machines Corporation, and Ralph S. Larsen of Johnson & Johnson Inc.

Singapore needs such people as friends. Now is the time for them to make their voices heard. The Fay case provides a legitimate opening for American citizens and companies to bring political and economic pressure to bear in the propagation of freedom and basic rights. Former President Bush can lead the effort by using his speech at a Citibank seminar in Singapore Thursday to call for clemency for Michael Fay.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/13/opinion/time-to-assert-american-values.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/13/opinion/time-to-assert-american-values.html


Document B: Cruel and Unusual Punishment Cartoon


Document C: Facts vs. Opinions: School Corporal Punishment

Website: http://www.stophitting.com/index.php?page=tenthings

http://www.stophitting.com/index.php?page=tenthings


Document D: Is Corporal Punishment Child Abuse? Video

Link to Video

https://drive.google.com/a/staff.ccisd.net/?urp=https://drive.google.com/#folders/0B7BBtOVC5Mg6OVI1Um9lNHJIQmc




Document E: Blog: "Bring Back the Lash"

May/June 2011

from Bring Back the Lash

Why flogging is more humane than prison.

By Peter Moskos

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(...)

Because one stint in prison so often leads to another, millions of criminals have come to alternate between incarceration and freedom while their families and communities suffer the economic and social consequences of their absence. When I was a police officer in Baltimore’s rough Eastern District, I don’t think I ever arrested anybody for the first time. Even the juveniles I arrested all had a record. Because not only does incarceration not “cure” criminality, in many ways in makes it worse. From behind bars a prisoner can’t be a parent, hold a job, maintain a relationship, or take care of their elders. Their spouse suffers. Their children suffer. And because of this, in the long run, we all suffer.

But maybe you still have your doubts about flogging. Perhaps you are concerned that the practice is torture. It is not. Torture is meant to achieve a goal, and until that goal is achieved, it continues. Punishment is finite and is prescribed in accordance with clear rules of law. And certainly offering criminals the option of flogging cannot be viewed as more torturous than the status quo.

Indeed it is our current system of imprisonment that most resembles torture. Overwhelming evidence suggests that by locking people in cells and denying them meaningful human contact, as is the case with solitary confinement, we cause irreparable damage; when prisoners are held in group living quarters, they often form criminal associations and reinforce aggressive antisocial norms; and through parole boards’ decisions, we hold the power to continue such punishment for extended periods of time. In addition, it’s terribly expensive. And for what? What do we gain? Why incapacitate criminals in a non-rehabilitative environment never meant for punishment? It is like being entombed alive, something more torturous than flogging could ever be.

And worse, given that life inside the concertina wire is so well hidden from those of us on the outside, prison is a dishonest way of dealing with the problem of punishment. Flogging, on the other hand, is different. Physical violence has the advantage of being honest, transparent, inexpensive, and easy to understand. What you see is what you get. If you want someone to receive more punishment, you give more lashes. If you want them to receive less punishment, you give fewer.

As ugly as it may seem, corporal punishment would be an effective and comparatively humane way to bring our prison population back in line with world standards. To those in prison (after the approval of some parole board designed to keep the truly dangerous behind bars) we could offer the lash in exchange for sentence years. I propose that each six months of incarceration be exchanged for one lash. As a result, our prison population would plummet. This would not only save money, it would also save prisons for those who truly deserve to be there. And if you think that flogging isn’t punishment enough, that prisons are necessary precisely because they torture so cruelly and horribly—then we’ve entered a truly bizarre world of unparalleled cruelty. Flogging may be too harsh or too lenient, but it can’t be both.

Make no mistake: this is punishment, and punishment must by definition hurt. Even under controlled conditions, with doctors present and the convict choosing a lashing over a prison sentence, the details of flogging are enough to make most people queasy. Those receiving lashes have described the cane cutting through layers of flesh and tissue, leaving “furrows that were … bloody pulp.” Even if these wounds were attended to immediately, a full


recovery could take weeks or months. In some cases, the scars would remain as permanent reminders of the ordeal.

The lash, which metes out punishment without falsely promising betterment, is an unequivocal expression of society’s condemnation. For better and for worse, flogging would air the dirty laundry of race and punishment in America in a way that prisons—which, by their very design, are removed from society—can never do. To highlight an injustice is in no way to condone it. Quite the opposite.

Without a radical defense of flogging, changes to our current defective system of justice are hard to imagine. The glacial pace of reform promises only the most minor adjustments to the massive machinery of incarceration. Bringing back the lash is one way to destroy it—if not completely, then at least for the millions of Americans for whom the punishment of prison is far, far worse than the crime they have committed. Yes, flogging may seem brutal and retrograde, but only because we are in mass denial about the greater brutality of our supposedly civilized and progressive prisons.

Peter Moskos is a sociologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.


Document F: Torture Cartoon


Document G: "Rough Justice" by Alejandro Reyes

Rough Justice: A Caning in Singapore Stirs Up a Fierce Debate about Crime and Punishment

By Alejandro Reyes

Since March 31, Queenstown Prison has housed Michael Peter Fay, an American teenager who has arguably become Singapore's most famous -- or notorious -- prison inmate. After pleading guilty to vandalism charges, the 18-year-old student was sentenced March 3 to four months in jail, a $2,200 fine -- and six strokes of the cane. [Because the story involved an American, it] made headlines worldwide…

After losing an appeal against his sentence, Fay asked Singapore's President [to throw out his punishment]. On May 4, the government…recommended…that Fay's caning be reduced to four strokes as a gesture of respect for the American president. … It was not until about noon the next day that [Fay learned] the news. His legal team was inside [the prison] for more than an hour. "He was happy that the clemency was considered," said Fay’s lawyer. "He thanked his family and asked them to pray for him. He's nervous." …

… Soon after his lawyers left him, Michael Fay was informed that his caning sentence was to be carried out that afternoon. … In the caning room he was stripped naked. He bent over and his arms and legs were fastened down by straps. A protective covering was placed over his kidneys. A prison official, a medical officer and the caner were the only ones present. The caner wound up and, using his full body weight, struck with the 13mm-thick…rod, which had been soaked overnight to prevent it from splitting. Each stroke on Fay's exposed buttocks came about half a minute apart. It was over in minutes. After the fourth and final stroke, say Singapore officials, Fay shook hands with his caner and insisted on walking back to his cell unaided. He wanted to act like a man.

The cases of Fay and eight other foreign teenagers arrested for vandalism stirred up…a fierce debate about crime and punishment… It put the spotlight on the judicial systems in the U.S. … and Singapore…

The trouble began on Sept. 18, 1993. At about 8 a.m. [a Singaporean judge] …drove his wife's car to the Supreme Court. He didn't notice anything strange. At 10 a.m., however, the judge was informed by police that something was wrong: his car had been sprayed with red paint. [The judge] drove home at lunchtime…where he noticed that his neighbor’s car had also been spray-painted. Police later determined that both cars had been vandalized overnight. That afternoon, [the judge] drove to a shop, where the paint was removed with thinner and the car polished.

Police linked the incident to other cases. The day before, vandals had struck at a multi-story carpark, …spray-painting at least six cars. On Sept. 26, another car…was pelted with eggs and also kicked and dented. The hood of another car...was damaged by a brick. And on Oct. 4, vandals threw eggs at two cars … and switched their rear license plates.

[The police] set out to stop the spree. In the early hours of Oct. 6 they laid an ambush… The operation paid off. Between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. police chased down a red Mercedes and arrested 16-year-old International School student Shiu Chi Ho of Hong Kong …

During about seven hours of interrogation, Shiu gave police names of boys he said were responsible for the vandalism. … Five [students were] arrested including two 15-year-old Malaysians …, a16-year-old Australian…, and two Americans: Stephen Freehill, then 16, and Michael Fay, 18. …

The same day, police took Fay to his mother and stepfather's 21st-floor apartment…. Above the boy's bed hung the American stars & stripes and a Singapore flag. Five other Singapore flags were found in the room, along with two "Not for hire" taxi signs, a "Smoking strictly prohibited" signboard, a "No Exit" sign, and other such items. According to police, the flags and signboards were stolen …


… Early on, Fay became the center of investigations. He spent nine days in custody, eventually signing a statement of confession. …[Michael’s mother] wasn't able to see her son until the second day of his detention.

Fay … decided to plead guilty and plea bargain. Fay had faced a total of 53 charges, mainly vandalism. He and his friends were alleged to have damaged eighteen vehicles over a period of ten days. He pleaded guilty to two vandalism charges, two counts of mischief and one charge of possessing stolen property.

[Fay was prosecuted under the] Vandalism Act of 1966…, originally conceived as a legal weapon to combat the spread of political graffiti … The law clearly mandates between three and eight strokes of the cane for each count of vandalism, though .. first time offenders can escape caning "if the writing, drawing, mark or inscription is done with pencil, crayon, chalk or other delible substances and not with paint, tar or other indelible substances."

[Fay’s lawyer] argued that the fact the paint was easily and cheaply removed should have saved his client from the mandatory caning. It didn't. For Judge F.G. Remedios, paint was paint.

The afternoon Fay was sentenced…, [an international debate about fair punishment began.]

Alejandro Reyes is an Asiaweek Correspondent based in Singapore. He was educated in the United States.

Adaptation Note: All effort was made to honestly excerpt Mr. Reyes’ original manuscript. However, obtrusive brackets showing insertions of single, clarifying words were avoided. Full length article can be found at http://www.corpun.com/awfay9405.htm.

http://www.corpun.com/awfay9405.htm


Document H: Pro-Spanking Studies May Have Global Effect

Pro-Spanking Studies May Have Global Effect

Thursday, 07 Jan 2010 11:11 AM

By Theodore Kettle

Two recent analyses – one psychological, the other legal – may debunk lenient modern parenting the way the Climategate e-mail scandal has short circuited global warming alarmism.

A study entailing 2,600 interviews pertaining to corporal punishment, including the questioning of 179 teenagers about getting spanked and smacked by their parents, was conducted by Marjorie Gunnoe, professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Gunnoe’s findings, announced this week: “The claims made for not spanking children fail to hold up. They are not consistent with the data.”

Those who were physically disciplined performed better than those who weren’t in a whole series of categories, including school grades, an optimistic outlook on life, the willingness to perform volunteer work, and the ambition to attend college, Gunnoe found. And they performed no worse than those who weren’t spanked in areas like early sexual activity, getting into fights, and becoming depressed. She found little difference between the sexes or races.

Another study published in the Akron Law Review last year examined criminal records and found that children raised where a legal ban on parental corporal punishment is in effect are much more likely to be involved in crime.

A key focus of the work of Jason M. Fuller of the University of Akron Law School was Sweden, which 30 years ago became the first nation to impose a complete ban on physical discipline and is in many respects “an ideal laboratory to study spanking bans,” according to Fuller.

Since the spanking ban, child abuse rates in Sweden have exploded over 500 percent, according to police reports. Even just one year after the ban took effect, and after a massive government public education campaign, Fuller found that “not only were Swedish parents resorting to pushing, grabbing, and shoving more than U.S. parents, but they were also beating their children twice as often.”

After a decade of the ban, “rates of physical child abuse in Sweden had risen to three times the U.S. rate” and “from 1979 to 1994, Swedish children under seven endured an almost six-fold increase in physical abuse,” Fuller’s analysis revealed.

“Enlightened” parenting also seems to have produced increased violence later. “Swedish teen violence skyrocketed in the early 1990s, when children that had grown up entirely under the spanking ban first became teenagers,” Fuller noted. “Preadolescents and teenagers under fifteen started becoming even more violent toward their peers. By 1994, the number of youth criminal assaults had increased by six times the 1984 rate.”

Since Sweden, dozens of countries have banned parental corporal punishment, like Germany, Italy, and in 2007 New Zealand, where using force to correct children entails full criminal penalties, and where a mother cannot even legally take her child’s hand to bring him where he refuses to go.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, meanwhile, challenges laws permitting any physical punishment of children and has called on all governments in the world to prohibit every form of physical discipline, including within the family.


In the U.S., the National Association of Social Workers has declared that all physical punishment of children has harmful effects and should be stopped; social workers are being trained to advocate against physical discipline when they visit homes. And in 2007, San Francisco Bay area Assemblywoman Sally Lieber unsuccessfully proposed legislation imposing a California state ban on spanking children under the age of four.

Contrary to popular belief, the pediatrician and leftist political activist Dr. Benjamin Spock did not popularize parental leniency. In early editions of his famously bestselling book, “Baby and Child Care,” Spock did not rule out spanking, (although he did later); on the contrary, Spock called for “clarity and consistency of the parents’ leadership,” considered kindness and devotion to be a necessity for parents who spank, and believed that the inability to be firm was “the commonest problem of parents in America.”

Spock’s 21st century disciples, however, depart from his original precepts. DrSpock.com, which “embodies the strength and identity of world-renowned pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, providing parents with the latest expert content from today's leading authorities in parenting,” and embraces Dr. Spock’s “philosophy and vision,” declares that “Punishment is not the key to discipline.”

The parental guidance website contends that “Spanking teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right.” DrSpock.com concludes that “The American tradition of spanking may be one reason that there is much more violence in our country than in any other comparable nation.”

Of like mind is the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose official policy says: “Despite its common acceptance, spanking is a less effective strategy than timeout or removal of privileges for reducing undesired behavior in children. Although spanking may immediately reduce or stop an undesired behavior, its effectiveness decreases with subsequent use.”

The academy adds: “The only way to maintain the initial effect of spanking is to systematically increase the intensity with which it is delivered, which can quickly escalate into abuse. Thus, at best, spanking is only effective when used in selective infrequent situations.”

“Timeout,” a widely popularized alternative to physical discipline in which a child is separated from a situation or environment after misbehaving, was devised in the 1960’s by behavioral researcher Arthur Staats as “a very mild punishment, the removal from a more reinforcing situation.”

Gunnoe’s findings are being largely ignored by the U.S. media, but made a splash in British newspapers. It is not the first time her work has been bypassed by the press. Her 1997 work showing that customary spanking reduced aggression also went largely unreported.

Nor is she alone in her conclusions. Dr. Diana Baumrind of the University of California, Berkeley and her teams of professional researchers over a decade conducted what is considered the most extensive and methodologically thorough child development study yet done. They examined 164 families, tracking their children from age four to 14. Baumrind found that spanking can be helpful in certain contexts and discovered “no evidence for unique detrimental effects of normative physical punishment.”

She also found that children who were never spanked tended to have behavioral problems, and were not more competent than their peers.

As in climate change, politicians all over the world seem out of touch with the most rigorous science regarding parental discipline. The newest research could constitute powerful ammunition to parents rights activists seeking to reverse the global trend of intrusive governments muscling themselves between the rod and the child.

© 2014 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


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