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| It is perhaps a great irony that the “Christian Scriptures” that are used to support school paddling are all drawn from “the Old Testament,” essentially Jewish texts, and are sometimes sprinkled over with a few unrelated and meaningless “New Testament” phrases to make the practice “seem Christian.” We could argue that the “Old Testament” passages are nearly as contorted as the New, since no verse anywhere in the Bible mentions teachers as hitters, a paddle as a beating implement, schools, or the buttocks as a target. Further Solomon’s proverbs must be pulled out of the context of a society where adults were beaten, where slaves could be legally beaten to death, where anyone who did work from Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday could be stoned to death, and where animals were sacrificed on a regular basis. The people who “pull out the verses” to support hitting kids ignore all of the rest, and then interpret even those verses in radically different ways than they were given. | | The Jews are not nearly so ignorant of their own Scriptures as “paddle-whacking” Christians are. They fully understand the historical and cultural differences. Suffice it to say, if you want the Jewish view of such things—who are the only people on earth to whom those Scriptures were specifically given to by the way, then it is easy to find. Israel does not allow “corporal punishment” in its schools. Further Israel is one of only a dozen or so countries on earth where parental hitting at home is also illegal. | | I have talked with some Jewish people here in the US—including a Rabbi and his 12-year-old daughter. Neither she nor her siblings were ever “spanked” or hit in any way. She was a “super achiever” in school on orchestra and academics, and seemed very wise beyond her years to me. Their whole family seemed very enlightened and advanced. | | The Jews of today have a large body of work beyond the “Old Testament” to guide them in modern times. They are well aware of the ancient and limited nature of their early writings, and have moved far beyond that in their everyday social lives. | |
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