18 April 2008
From the Indianapolis Star online:
It’s apropos of this story about how a court ruled that a teacher who allegedly slapped a student while trying to restore order in a gym class was protected from battery charges under the state’s corporal punishment laws. Saying that what the teacher did — and it’s not obvious that anybody got actually slapped in this incident — under duress is protected under law, and saying that teachers “should” slap students — as if it were a first line of defense — are, of course, very different things. But I guess the interns writing the poll don’t really grasp that. (The headline at the link Sun-Times article is almost as badly off.)
The scary thing is that the voting is currently 51%/49% in favor of slapping as a classroom management technique.