In the early days of my career as a teacher paddling students was still legal and I hated the process. I was never spanked by my mother or father and I spared the rod with my two daughters. I believe that children can learn how to be good people without violent punishment. Still, there were a few times when I was tasked with disciplining one of my students by spanking with a wooden paddle. It was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done and in retrospect I should have refused to do so. Instead I half-heartedly tapped on the backsides of the couple of boys whose infractions had merited strong punishment. Needless to say, my flimsy attempts at corporal punishment were met more with laughter than contrition. 

I found myself creating ways to work with my students with reason and example rather than answering their violence with my own. I rarely referred a child to the office lest I be commanded to carry out the ruling of swatting them. I wasn’t a pushover in creating consequences for wayward deeds, but I eschewed corporal punishment whenever possible. It was a great relief to me when the outmoded process was deemed illegal and I no longer had to lift my hand against a child. 

I am mostly a gentle soul although my words sometimes sting, a trait that I always regret. It worries me that our present day society seems so numb to violence that it views threats and hateful jabs as just a normal aspect of our human natures. I am particularly uncomfortable with the use of dangerous and ugly words against each other that have seemingly become so common place. So many of the filters that we once used to spare the feelings of the people around us have been removed making verbal bullying a way of life. Little wonder that so many of our children are depressed and feeling so unsure of themselves. 

I am quite fortunate in being able to say that I have only rarely been on the bad end of verbal violence and have never had to endure physical assaults from anyone. My parents were loving people with each other and with me and my brothers. I remember only one time when my father became so angry about something that my mother said that he made a hole in the wall with his fist. He calmed down immediately and apologized for his infraction but such things were so rare in my experience that I remember that incident to this day. 

My mother was a gentle soul whose heart was focused on kindness. When she became ill with bipolar disorder she would sometimes say horrible things which were so unlike her. I had to learn to ignore the voice of her illness and use her words instead to know that she was in need of help. While the sting of their ugliness hurt for a second, I always new that they did not represent who she was when she was well. 

Only one time did a classmate bully me when I was in high school. I was running for school secretary and as part of my campaign had worked on flyers that I hoped might tempt my fellow students to vote for me. As I handed one of my campaign photos to a boy in my class he became vicious. He asked me why I would think that anyone in their right mind would vote for me because I was ugly and nobody liked me. I was stunned and shook a bit in fright as he tore the flyer into pieces and then stomped on them with disgust. The anger on his face made me fear that he might be about to hit me, but instead he simply walked away shaking his head leaving me to wonder what I might possibly have done to him to instill such fierce dislike. 

I got over the incident quickly. I barely knew this young man and so I realized that he had no real basis for his attacks. Nonetheless like most teens I did wonder just a bit if I was somehow off-putting to the people around. I tried to smile a bit more and think a bit less about myself as my mother had often counseled me to do. She was a firm believer that most insults arose from misunderstandings rather than actual dislike. She assured me that something else had been bothering that boy on that day and that I had just taken the knocks of his inner anger. 

As an educator I witnessed cruelty between immature students but never at the level that it seems to be in the present time. Ugliness appears to have become a kind of disease in which even adults in leadership roles express their thoughts quite egregiously. The use of threats is more and more common. It is difficult to simply ignore the angry language as someone just having a bad day, especially when for some people every single day is a bad day. 

When do we finally rise up together to condemn the physical and emotional violence that grows around us like disease in a petrie dish? How can we just accept brutal imagery as normal? Why are we pretending that vile comments are just part of our freedom to speak whatever comes to mind? Do we not understand that repetition of angry and ugly ideas more often than not leads to roiling anger that ultimately hurts far more than just feelings? What kind of message are we sending to our children when we accept violence as just an aspect of life over which we have no control? Why are we not turning our backs on so called leaders who rant with venomous words? Why aren’t we calling such people to task?

I do not advocate for either physical or emotional violence. We have enough abuse, crimes and wars to endure without also allowing the outright ugliness of bullying to seep into every corner of our existence. We have made taunts and threats normal by not repudiating those who would use them. History has shown us that following the bullies of the world never works out as well as we may have thought. It’s long past time that we let it be known that we will not tolerate such abuse from anyone, most especially those vying to lead us. Violence only begets more violence. it’s time we once again value a world in which those who threaten and divide us are voted out. Together we can do this and we don’t need a paddle or vile words to make it happen.