In article , Robert Casey
writes:

Nuns in Catholic grammar school routinely used violence on the kids, but
would sure be upset about anything vaguely about sex....

Is that really what we want to teach our children?

I wouldn't want to subject kids to the crap I had to endure in said
school.

When you get right down to it, except for a few shameful and widely
publicized exceptions, todays kids suffer from too little rather than too
much physical punishment.

I disagree! Beating children simply means the beater can't think of
a better way to deal with the kid.

It also teaches the kid at a very primeval level that violence is a
legitimate method of getting what you want from others.

It also delivered a message that people in authority are likely to abuse
their positions and cannot be trusted.

WOW - good point, Robert!

As the teachers often punished kids that didn't misbehave
as the ones that did.

IHM nuns were big on punishing the whole class.

Throw in it being the Vietnam era and .....

Bingo.

Sometimes teachers try to "teach respect" with violence. Well, if "fear and
hatred" = "respect" then it worked.... But I don't think respect does
equal that.

We also had male nuns, called "brothers". CFX was their callsign, stood
for -something-something-Xavier. One of them was an ex marine drill
seargent,
and thought nothing beating on a kid 20 minutes non-stop. Another was from
the Navy, and also could beat on a kid even longer.

We didn't have those until high school. None of them were as sadistic as nuns.

Not suprizing that some kids tried to burn the school down. No
real damage, something like a wastepaper basket on fire. We
always hoped it was the real thing whenever they did a fire drill
(after the fire dept made them not pre-announce that there'd be a
drill today).

We were told that if someone attacked the school or a "religious person" they'd
burn in hell. And would probably have other consequences, like having their arm
fall off when they tried to raise it to hit a nun. Nobody ever tried to find
out if such things were true...

All that's changed now. Catholic schools are now more like private academies,
and most of the teachers are lay people because nuns and brothers are too few.

73 de Jim, N2EY