Gya: let jail make sign over kids' heads say UN

The U.N.Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has borne no children that anybody has ever heard of, is insisting that Guyana, "should expressly prohibit corporal punishment by law in the family, schools and other institutions."

Where will UNCRC be when children begin to go wild? Nobody says that parents should brutalize children, but this intrusion into families' affairs, by bureaucrats who are totally clueless about child rearing, is unconscionable.

Trinidad, the United States, and other countries are living with the consequences of this ridiculous no corporal punishment rule. The result is that the inmates are running the asylum and are beating up each other, teachers, other adults, and are threatening anyone who gets in their way.

Here, in the U.S. children know that their parents can't do diddly to them. Why? The threat of child welfare bureaucrats hang over parents' heads. Punish the child and they call child welfare. If the parent is arrested and prosecuted for a purely disciplinary action, the notation of the event remains as a black mark on the individual's record. That can make applying for a job a difficult proposition indeed.

Somebody has to have some common sense about this and distinguish between corporal punishment that is beneficial and that which is harmful. A blanket outlawing of corporal punishment will serve to harm society in the long run. Time outs, reasonable talks, and other favorite methods of the feel-good crowd only work with a child who will listen. Every parent knows that there are times children need more than a talking-to, they need a good whipping to bring them into line.

If corporal punishment was the societal norm for hundreds of years in the U.K., for example, and generations of Brits turned out to be fine, upstanding citizens, why is corporal punishment so wrong and so bad now?

Protect the child, yes. However, the parents must be left as the sole arbiters of the method of discipline they employ with their children.