Whoa! Swatting requirements @ Gillaspie's church school

[fundyfunland]

Didn't see this posted on the new site, so hopefully we haven't covered it before.

I ended up linking from the Gillaspie family's site to their church's site, and then to the church's school site....

Looking through the Handbook for Preschool, I came across the expected disciplinary measures to be taken for MAJOR and MINOR offences. I (don't know why but) was SHOCKED that this school is allowed to operate when they're clearly preaching abuse.

For example, "major" offences by a pre-schooler includes: "disrespect to authority," "cursing" and "intentionally disrupting class." It is required that parents give "3 firm swats with a paddle" to the offending children at home w/in 24-hrs & must sign a disciplinary note saying this has been done b/f the kid can go back to school.

"Minor" transgressions (shirt not tucked in, gum chewing, inattentivness, etc.) are disciplined on a demerit system. 5 demerit points leads to Major transgression swatting.

http://www.gospelbaptistchurchDOTcom /pdf_doc/school/11-12/Handbook%20Preschool%2011.pdf

Edited x2 b/c I can't figure out how to break links on the new site :oops:

[Patsy]

I don't know who the Gillaspies are, but aren't some American schools allowed to corporally punish students themselves?

[fundyfunland]

I hope not! I'm from Canada (corporal punishment is outlawed in schools...not sure about homes) , so not sure what the laws are like there. The school is located in Bonita Springs, Florida, if that helps. Seriously though, I'd be even more appalled if their padal swatting was legal. Sick! Sick! Sick!

[fundyfunland]

BTW - Gillaspie's are an ATI/IBLP family. Here's their blog: http:// thegillaspiefamilyDOT com/

[quinoa mama]

In South Carolina a law just passed this year requiring schools to get permission before they spank the kids. I think they were doing that anyway in practice, but it's interesting that it just became official that they couldn't use corporal punishment without permission. I graduated in '96 and I remember kids in elementary school going to the principal's office to be spanked. I got curious about my district's official policy, and I found this: http://www.stophittingstudents.org/Dist ... addle.html

[Bookworm89]

In Texas, it depends on the school district. But for the most part even if it is allowed, they won't do it. However, there are exceptions, there is a smaller school district near me that does have corporal punishment and they do use it. Parents have to sign a document saying it is allowed (and 90% do) and the principal or one of the coaches met out the punishment. The students use to taunt each other if they got caught that they were going to get "swats"

[Guest Anonymous]

Good grief... where to start?

Aside from the fact that I am in the firmly anti-spanking camp, I am wondering what on earth is on the curriculum of the pre-school teachers, if they send letters home asking for children to be beaten for displaying what are for the most part normal and age appropriate behaviours of their charges.

What exactly did the teachers learn in college and what on earth do they do all day, if it doesn't involve re-directing inattentive or disruptive behaviour, providing interesting and challenging activites and actively teaching little kids how to share, play nicely, tuck in their shirts, etc.

And how frustrating it must be all round when they do nothing except keep a tally of misdemeanours and send directives home for kids to be beaten up to 48 hours after the offence? Do teachers really think 3 year olds will connect the punishment with the 'crime' after such a long time? Are parents really happy to pay school fees and then be expected to pick up the 'bad guy' work where the teacher left off in the daytime?

And all this aside, would anyone really have faith in a Pastor whose front page 'news' includes an announcement like this:

Pastor & Cathy Would Love For You

To Join Them On This Cruise!

West Coast Baptist Alaska Cruise

with Dr. Paul Chappell, Aug 6-11, 2011

If you would like to participate, please sign-up in the name of Gospel Baptist Church. If at least eight people sign-up,

Pastor and Cathy will receive a discount!

[Koala]

This turns my stomach. People should just stay the hell away from kids, if they can't treat them with kindness and respect. Seriously.

And oh but for the tables to be turned on these adults. I'd like to see their reaction if a person 200+ lbs bigger than them were coming at them with a "board". Might give the bastards a new perspective on things.

[Childless]

I am very much anti-spanking. There are better ways to deal with discipline issues. I would never send my child to a school that allows corporal punishment, even if it requires parental approval. I don't want my child to witness or hear about any child being spanked in school. It doesn't create a healthy learning environment.

[demgirl]

I am shocked that there are still places that paddle or spank in public schools. I would think that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. And honestly, how is that not battery? I know an exception is carved out for parental spanking, but geez... I'm against any spanking, but it's not the same thing.

[forever ago]

I hope not! I'm from Canada (corporal punishment is outlawed in schools...not sure about homes) , so not sure what the laws are like there. The school is located in Bonita Springs, Florida, if that helps. Seriously though, I'd be even more appalled if their padal swatting was legal. Sick! Sick! Sick!

I think most states in the US prohibit corporal punishment in schools. There are some that don't, a lot of them Southern. Beyond the state level it's up to school districts, and while my state allows corporal punishment, my county does not. At home however, fair game, though some states in New England have tried to ban that as well in the past.

Private schools, on the other hand...

and yes, smacking kids for every little offense is abuse. For sure. Seriously, there are better ways...

[forever ago]

I am very much anti-spanking. There are better ways to deal with discipline issues. I would never send my child to a school that allows corporal punishment, even if it requires parental approval. I don't want my child to witness or hear about any child being spanked in school. It doesn't create a healthy learning environment.

Indeed, it creates an environment of fear. No decent human being wants to witness another in pain, for any reason. Spanking does not teach kids to behave of their own free will, it teaches them to obey out of fear.

[Jessica]

:o

[Olivia]

Um, even people who are okay with spanking will often draw the line at PADDLING a TODDLER. I'm not a big fan of spanking, but I don't think swatting a child's bottom with your hand is abuse. But a systematic, formal spanking with a paddle long after the child has forgotten the offense, of a preschooler? Yeah, that's bat-shit crazy and abusive, as far as I'm concerned.

[Turtle]

That is horrific. I hope my child never has to witness an adult smacking one of his peers.

I want to throw up just thinking about paddling a toddler.

[Mommy22alyns]

Oooh, and they're against the ebil ROCK music too! :?

[ladypuglover]

I was abused by teachers in grade school, so I would never allow a teacher to touch my children like that. My kindergarten teacher was extradited to California for killing a child years before and she would do to us the same thing that killed the child. My 2nd grade teacher went berserk on day and started hitting one little boy, I jumped up and yelled at her to stop and she lifted me by my hair and slapped me until I fainted. A classmate ran up to the highschool (we had k-12 on the same property and attached buildings) to get his dad who was principal to get her off of me. My 3rd grade teacher was so cruel to me that the 4th grade teacher had to take me into her class to protect me and 2 other students. A new 4th grade teacher used to mock me for checking out more than one book at a time and loved to tie us all up in our chairs while she tormented us for whatever reason. So I am gun shy about teachers in the first place and would never allow them to hurt my sons.

I this is sick.

[fundyfunland]

I was abused by teachers in grade school, so I would never allow a teacher to touch my children like that. My kindergarten teacher was extradited to California for killing a child years before and she would do to us the same thing that killed the child. My 2nd grade teacher went berserk on day and started hitting one little boy, I jumped up and yelled at her to stop and she lifted me by my hair and slapped me until I fainted. A classmate ran up to the highschool (we had k-12 on the same property and attached buildings) to get his dad who was principal to get her off of me. My 3rd grade teacher was so cruel to me that the 4th grade teacher had to take me into her class to protect me and 2 other students. A new 4th grade teacher used to mock me for checking out more than one book at a time and loved to tie us all up in our chairs while she tormented us for whatever reason. So I am gun shy about teachers in the first place and would never allow them to hurt my sons.

I this is sick.

WOW! That's crazy! So sorry you had to go through that.

As someone pointed out, can't imagine that the "swatting" (I think that's the word the school uses) is effective if it's administered hours after the alleged offence.

[Guest Anonymous]

Here is a link to the "Under loving command" booklet that they give out with the kindergarten handbook:

http://www.ntmu.net/lovingcommand.htm

The sick individual who wrote this, beats a preschooler for forgetting to put her shoes and socks on:

As I was busy getting breakfast one morning I asked our daughter to put on her shoes and socks. I am sure she intended to obey me, but she got busy playing and forgot. I told her to go in and lie across the footstool, because she did not obey me and I must correct her. I was busy in the kitchen and failed to go in immediately as I should have done. When I did, there she was lying on her tummy across the footstool, waiting for her correction, singing, and swinging her feet. She was waiting in complete rest. She accepted the switch as the inevitable result of disobedience. Each one of our children sweetly receives the switch; they realize we use it to train them, because we love them. And afterward, oh how free we are to show them our affection!

My heart breaks to think of the baby girl, so broken, that she just lay there, swinging her feet, not knowing when her beating would begin. How can the mother who gave birth to her not melt at that sight?

With no sense of irony, she mentions that she also behaved badly when she forgot to go in and spank her straight away.... shame God didn't reach out from heaven and beat her to a pulp for her own act of forgetfulness.

The vile, crackpot then goes on to talk about her husband waking a sleeping child in order to spank him because they felt God tell them to.....

Finally one evening during our family Bible-reading time, Daddy asked our son to do something he did not want to do, with the usual result… tears. We tried to comfort and coax him, but it only brought on more tears. That night he went to bed without being brought to the place of obedience.

As his dad and I sat there and talked about it, our conviction grew that we were the ones who were not obedient, and that we had to begin to obey immediately for our son's sake. So Daddy went into his room. He put him on his lap and told him that we didn't have peace about what happened. He confessed to our son that we had not been obedient to the Lord who wanted us to be sure that our son obeyed. Daddy told him that he would have to correct him. So he spanked him, held him in his arms and comforted him, had him do the thing he had been asked to do in the first place, then put him back to bed.

Seriously creepily, they also talk about still spanking a teenage daughter.

Of course there will come the time when the rod for her is laid aside and God alone will continue to train her with His own loving rod.., but not yet. Particularly during these very emotional teenage years, it is a blessed instrument of training to deliver us from any need for hostility toward her, or from her toward us.

How can parents read this stuff and still enrol their kids at the school? What bit of their brain is missing when they read and follow this abusive claptrap that the school gives out as mandatory reading?

[Turtle]

Here is a link to the "Under loving command" booklet that they give out with the kindergarten handbook:

http://www.ntmu.net/lovingcommand.htm

The sick individual who wrote this, beats a preschooler for forgetting to put her shoes and socks on:

As I was busy getting breakfast one morning I asked our daughter to put on her shoes and socks. I am sure she intended to obey me, but she got busy playing and forgot. I told her to go in and lie across the footstool, because she did not obey me and I must correct her. I was busy in the kitchen and failed to go in immediately as I should have done. When I did, there she was lying on her tummy across the footstool, waiting for her correction, singing, and swinging her feet. She was waiting in complete rest. She accepted the switch as the inevitable result of disobedience. Each one of our children sweetly receives the switch; they realize we use it to train them, because we love them. And afterward, oh how free we are to show them our affection!

My heart breaks to think of the baby girl, so broken, that she just lay there, swinging her feet, not knowing when her beating would begin. How can the mother who gave birth to her not melt at that sight?

With no sense of irony, she mentions that she also behaved badly when she forgot to go in and spank her straight away.... shame God didn't reach out from heaven and beat her to a pulp for her own act of forgetfulness.

The vile, crackpot then goes on to talk about her husband waking a sleeping child in order to spank him because they felt God tell them to.....

Finally one evening during our family Bible-reading time, Daddy asked our son to do something he did not want to do, with the usual result… tears. We tried to comfort and coax him, but it only brought on more tears. That night he went to bed without being brought to the place of obedience.

As his dad and I sat there and talked about it, our conviction grew that we were the ones who were not obedient, and that we had to begin to obey immediately for our son's sake. So Daddy went into his room. He put him on his lap and told him that we didn't have peace about what happened. He confessed to our son that we had not been obedient to the Lord who wanted us to be sure that our son obeyed. Daddy told him that he would have to correct him. So he spanked him, held him in his arms and comforted him, had him do the thing he had been asked to do in the first place, then put him back to bed.

Seriously creepily, they also talk about still spanking a teenage daughter.

Of course there will come the time when the rod for her is laid aside and God alone will continue to train her with His own loving rod.., but not yet. Particularly during these very emotional teenage years, it is a blessed instrument of training to deliver us from any need for hostility toward her, or from her toward us.

How can parents read this stuff and still enrol their kids at the school? What bit of their brain is missing when they read and follow this abusive claptrap that the school gives out as mandatory reading?

Words fail me. :o

[Koala]

These people just belong in jail. That's all there is to it.