Bring back the rod

Daily we read of violence among teenagers. Remember Columbine? Now we have an eighth-grader being stabbed by a fellow student in Coeur d’Alene.

My parents and my generation believed in “spare the rod and spoil the child,” and you know what? It worked! We now have shows like the Nanny and a so-called learned psychologist telling us corporal punishment is wrong. My father would call that “bunk.” You get what you sow, and you see daily what we reap.

My generation learned that if you misbehaved you suffered the consequence of a spanking – not a beating but a spanking.

You knew you had pushed society’s rules and deserved it.

There are other factors that contribute to this violence, like fatherless homes and working mothers and experts telling us that past generations were wrong. But you know what? We never woke up to headlines like I read in Saturday’s paper: “Middle schooler stabbed by classmate.”

Parents were their own experts in raising their children and didn’t require outside misinformation from experts in the field of behavioral psychology. Which in itself is not a proven field in any way.

We daily see the results of this misinformed “bunch of bunk.”

James A. Nelson

Spokane