More than 2,000 South Africans were asked on the TimesLive website whether or not caning should be reintroduced in our schools and an overwhelming eight out of 10 participants agreed that it should, but surely the answer to ill-disciplined kids lies in their early development as opposed to a constant fear of being beaten?
I'm not saying that a hiding every now and then, when truly deserved, is a bad thing, but I do think that teaching our kids through violence on a regular basis is the wrong way to go about it.
Children learn from a very young age. They develop traits and characteristics as early as their first few years in school, and once these have been formed they generally stick. Shouldn't we then be focusing on education at this age instead of trying to beat these bad habits out of our kids at an older age?
It baffles me sometimes. It's like the high number of road accidents caused by public transport. Instead of tackling the incompetent taxi industry, who seem to obey no laws but their own, it is proposed that the maximum speed limit is reduced.
Why not hit the problem head on, as it were, and teach taxi drivers how to drive like they're supposed to? Why not enforce the laws already in place before piling on new ones?
And think of the potential problems reintroducing corporal punishment would have….
Every time a black teacher hits a white kid or a white teacher hits a black kid everyone would scream racism, parents would be up in arms about their kids being picked on and teachers may very well abuse the system.
And then what about what it's teaching our children? That to get respect it's perfectly okay to demand it with a stick?
It's a crime to use physical violence to get someone to do something (coercion) or to punish them with violence (assault), and if you hit an employee for any reason I guarantee you'll end up in a disciplinary hearing by the next morning, so for what reason would it be acceptable to manhandle our most vulnerable members of society?
If you have kids let us know what you think in the comments, or join the conversation on our Facebook page.