The Federal Government is wasting $2.5 m telling us not to smack our kids according to Courier Mail columnist Paul Syvret http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21527521-27197,00.html.

I agree, but I think that Syvret misses the crux of the issue. The campaign appears to rest on an assumption of mind body duality, a way of analysing the human being which most scientists and philosophers would now accept as being wrong. Descartes said "I think therefore I am", as though the mind more or less switched the rest of the body on. We now know that it is just as valid to say "I am therefore I think", and that there are huge biological interactions in both directions between mind and body.

What the anti-smacking campaign appears to be saying is that mental coercion is fine, but physical isn't, and that there is something wrong with communicating something through our physical sensors rather than mental ones. Makes me wonder how long body contact sport will be fashionable, and then perhaps we won't be allowed to cause ourselves any pain, even if it is done in the course of physical exercise.

Where does it leave me if I deliberately allow my younger son to bump into something when he is running because the pain will do a better job of training him not to run than me saying "Don't run"? Will that be child abuse one day?

The root of the problem is that some people want to deny that humans are part of the physical world at all. They'd love to do without all that icky painful smelly stuff called life.

Personally I think that the Government's campaign is simply an exercise in sending some money out to its mates.

To smack or not to smack is a question that has troubled the mind of man for some time, there are those who see it as a barbaric practice and those who see the ending of corporal punishment as the begining of the end of civilization as we know it.
It's a toss up.

I'd really like to see the local hoons who commit minor anti-social things such as breaking bottles in the streets or practicing their grafitti on some old ladies new 'Panel-Bond' fence, publically flogged on their bare arses in front of the Town Hall at 11.00AM each Saturday morn.

If nothing else it would provide alternative entertainment for their mates who might hesitate to emulate their example, either around town or in front of the appreciative townsfolk.

It would give new meaning to "Elevenses".

GY, still mulling over your philosophical points of view, until this comes to end I'd like to remind you of those horrible parents and teachers who love nothing more than to flog kids.

I recall my 10th Grade teacher punching me full fisted in the face. He yelled abuse at me for some time before this.

The violence I felt was not physical but the helplessness against a system that would always support this kind of violence as 'behaviour managment and thus justified'.

Are you suggesting this violent act taught me something worthwhile?

PS. I don't think Jerry likes you.

Rainier, I wasn't defending "flogging". I went to a Catholic boys school in Brisbane from Grade 8, but you could go from Grade 5 or 6. The veterans from the lower school talked about a vicious dispensation that had existed before Fr Dempsey became the principal, which was the year I went there. According to gossip, there were fathers and brothers who used to use the strap pretty profligately.

I was only caned once in my whole school career - bit of a goody two-shoes - and the time I was caned upset me terribly. However I was hit once or twice at home in my teenage years. I have hit my own kids, maybe once each, when it seemed appropriate. Just because I don't approve of indiscriminate flogging doesn't mean that I don't see a use for judicious application of pain.

I often wonder if it was the violence that makes Kevin Rudd appear to be so reticent to talk about his time at Marist Brothers Rosalie, or to want to claim it as an Alma Mater. He could win some friends if he spoke out. There are generations that would empathise.

Do you have kids? Have you never smacked them?

Having attended Catholic schools for most of my life,corporal punishment in the right context,just shows you care.

I still remember to this day when I was six years old being ostracised and belittled by a teacher in our public system because I could not draw the pitch on a house roof to her satisfaction.Now that is child abuse.It hurt a lot more than being belted.

The greatest abuse of children today is the lack of discipline which our socialists state endorses through their fear of our legal disease.The legal fraternity need to do some soul searching,otherwise decay will be the order of the day.

hi all,

well sadly, physical abuse, is usually accompanied by
other forms of abuse as well....
as is documented....

I think the idea is that the people who regularly, hit and belt
their children badly
propagate their then children to be abusers on adulthood

a small step is to remind people that physical and mental
abuse is a crime ... yes here in australia

comes under assault laws

violence breeds violence.....and long term violence and
emotional abuse...
is what fills our jails

JH