The word `corporal' comes from the Latin word
corpus -- body. Corporal punishment is any physical
punishment which is on the body of the person being
punished. The only non-death corporal punishment mentioned
by the Torah is that of malkos, flogging, which was
to a maximum of 39 lashes. In addition, Beis Din had the
power to administer makos mardus to someone who
rebelled against their jurisdiction and these floggings had
no maximum number.
This is not the place to discuss the legalities of the
rights of individuals to administer corporal punishment, but
it is generally accepted that parents and instructors do
have some degree of right to physically punish children --
though this right is very limited.
To some, the word `smacking' conjures a violent `beating,'
yet a smack can be administered with varying degrees of
force, or even with no force at all.
Little Shimmy stretches out his grubby chocolaty hands to
touch the clean, white tablecloth. You say "No!" with a
stern tone. Shimmy looks at you -- and grabs the tablecloth,
wiping the chocolate all over the white cotton.
Swiftly, you grab his hand away and give it a little smack
and say to him, "I told you `No'!"
Shimmy bursts into tears.
The smack was barely a tap; perhaps softer than a kiss. It
was too light to hurt him, so what caused the tears?
The answer is that you hurt his pride. He knew he was being
punished and now, instead of being kissed and cuddled, he
was receiving a punishment.
Often, that small potch is all that is needed to
imprint into the child's mind the awareness that he has
stepped over `the red line.'
Current thought in training children to behave tends to rely
on reasoning with the child.
However, the baalei mussar explain that logic is only
effective if the mind rules over the body. If the body
rules, then the person will distort his logic to fit the
demands of his body.
A child's ability to reason is limited for two main reasons.
Firstly, he does not yet have the neural maturity to process
logical thought as well as an adult. Secondly, he has not
yet learned to rule his body with his mind.
The first aspect will only come with time and training. But
we can help him deal with the second aspect by `talking'
directly to the body and showing it that it is not always in
its interest to try to dominate the mind.
Hence, the famous saying that a child has two sets of ears.
One set is on either side of his head. The other set is at
his lower end. If he does not get the message through the
upper set of ears, he might need to `hear' it via his lower
set. That is the purpose of the smack which does hurt,
though not excessively.
The child knows that you are capable of hurting him more,
and the small smack will usually be enough to help him see
reason. The memory of the small amount of pain will weigh in
the favor of the mind when it tries to convince the body to
behave correctly.
The classic `beating' which was the favorite of the non-Jews
until the beginning of the New Era rarely has any place in
chinuch, and guidelines should be sought before
inflicting anything more than is mildly painful. Some
present-day gedolim have been misquoted as saying
that they are against any form of corporal punishment.
Actually, their objection is to corporal punishment as a
"way of life" and they agree that occasionally, a child does
need to receive a mild degree of corporal punishment when he
"does not get the message" any other way.
Rabbi C.P. Scheinberg shlita advises the "points
system," the incentive system in which children are awarded
points for good behavior, leading eventually to a
significant prize when the target number of points is
reached. He explained that if a child is rewarded with small
prizes too often, the small prizes will lose their appeal
and will not provide the incentive. He also advises that
when one child wrongs another child, you should pointedly
give something nice to the "victim" and not give it to the
"agressor," thereby giving the aggressor the message that he
loses by being aggressive.
Rabbi Scheinberg also stresses that if it is necessary to
give a potch to a child, it should never be to the
face of the child, as this can instill a life-long fear into
the child.
Chazal stress that the way of Torah is the way of
pleasantness. If a parent or a rebbe rules by force of fear,
he is paving the way for eventual rebellion and he is
distorting the values of the Torah.
