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Jul 07, 2008 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
Mr. Navindo Tinsarran’s letter, “Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children” (Kaieteur News July 4, 2008) should have been more aptly titled, “Those who do not beat their children hate them,’ or “Those who beat their children love them.”
Throughout his letter, he uses the euphemism ‘discipline’ for ‘beating’, implying that beating is the sole form of discipline or correction that exists. Isn’t he aware of non-violent discipline and non-hitting correction? We must stop this drivel of equating hitting children with correction and discipline.
His ‘careful’ definition of corporal punishment is merely self-serving as it denies children the same right to protection from assault that adults enjoy.
Would he tell his wife/girlfriend that if he doesn’t beat her, then he hates her? Or that if he does beat her then he loves her?
The same legal protection from assault that is recognised for your wife/girlfriend ought to be recognised for your children also. They are not chattel.
I notice that in his quotations from another version of the Bible, Mr. Tinsarran avoids the strong language of the King James Version which uses the word ‘beat’ and not ‘discipline’. At least the author-editors of the Proverbs and the KJV translators were honest and told it as they must have literally felt it from their parents, unlike Mr. Tinsarran who tries to sugar-coat ‘beat’ with ‘discipline’.
Does Mr. Tinsarran practice everything – I mean everything – he reads in the Bible? Such as not eating certain foods, worshipping on a certain day only, not wearing clothes made of two fibres, not sowing two different seeds in the same field, and a whole host of teachings which are impractical or barbaric or just so meaningless as to make no difference at all?
A literal and fundamentalist interpretation of what is believed to be God’s Word in any religion can be harmful to the social well-being of a people.
Now, I know that the majority of parents and teachers do genuinely love their children and pupils, but because they have been conditioned by certain archaic teachings from tradition, culture and religion, they think that beating children is an acceptable way of expressing love. I am not at all questioning parental or teacher love.
But I am insisting that it is inappropriate to express any kind of love by beating.
It is because they are believed to be divinely-sanctioned that religious teachings that commend the use of violence to control others can cause believers to commit the worst atrocities in the name of love.
Priests once used to kill ‘heathen’ babies in love, thinking that they were being sent to a heavenly home. Heretics were burnt at the stake in the name of a loving Christ.
Disobedient children, adulterers, idol-worshippers and other ‘sinners’ were once stoned to death, according to the laws ascribed to the biblical Moses. Today, those barbaric laws are no longer extant in any civilized nation.
Many other atrocities were committed by loving people in the name of love because they earnestly believed that such was the divinely-ordained way of expressing love.
The quote, “God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts,” has been used since medieval times to justify unthinkable atrocities.
Closer home, loving husbands would beat and kill their wives and afterwards confess with tears of genuine remorse that, “Me love she. Me didn’t mean fuh kill she. Me only mean fuh gie she a lil lash, but she get me real vex.” This happened because he was conditioned to express love in the wrong way.
“I beat you because I love you” is the worst form of mental conditioning that can be done to a person. It prepares them for a life of hypocrisy, inconsistency and insecurity.
It is therefore inappropriate and dangerous to express love by beating.
Those who spare the rod love their children.
Xiu Quan-Balgobind-Hackett
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