CROSS BODY BLOCK
TEACHING GUIDE
By Rick Norman
copyright 1997, all rights reserved
" I’ve no doubt that around the world at any given moment, a switch, belt, paddle, razor strap, bamboo stick, seal bone, or fan belt is contacting some little bare bottom somewhere. Nine-tenths of the pain a person suffers in his lifetime is at the hands of his loving parents in the name of discipline. " Jackson "Gooseball" Fielder
INTRODUCTION
"I believe...that the end of the world begins with the striking of a single child...It is
hard to love life fully when one has been hit and hurt." Phillip Greven, Spare the Child.
As the new millennium approaches, more psychiatrists, sociologists and ethicist are questioning the morality, efficacy and effect of corporal punishment. It seems incongruous that the Constitution would be interpreted to protect convicted felons from "cruel and unusual" corporal punishment yet not accord similar protection to innocent children.
In this day in age where extensive study is required to obtain a driver’s license but there is no educational prerequisite for having a child, it is critical that students address the issues surrounding corporal punishment: as disciplined, potential discipliners and as citizens of perhaps the most violent civilization on earth.
The Cross Body Block Teaching Guide grew out of the experiences of the author, Rick Norman, and others in teaching the novel Cross Body Block to high school and college students. The novel is used as course material in high schools and in the Accelerated Reader program.
The teaching guide is designed to be used in conjunction with the reading of Cross Body Block. After the class has read the novel, it should discuss the issues raised below in the order presented in this guide.
THE PROBLEM
" Turns out, in addition to everything else you have to do just to keep them alive ...., you have to teach them right from wrong. And that means trying to discipline them. That’s the rub. Nobody ever tells you the right way to do it. All you know is what your parents did to you and that what they did was wrong." Jackson "Gooseball" Fielder
Today the United states is on of the most violent nations in the world. Violence against the young in the name of discipline is commonplace.
In Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, the authors confirm that through
sociological study:
(1) persons who experienced the most corporal punishment as teenagers have a rate
of spouse-beating that is four times greater than those whose parents did
not hit them.
(2) the more often parents hit their children, the more likely the children are to have
severely attacked a brother or sister.
EXPERIENCES
"But I never felt there was much lasting wisdom being transferred through the end of that paddle. There is a fine line between teaching a kid right from wrong and teaching a kid violence. A kid’s bottom just ain’t a sensitive enough organ to be able to distinguish between a spanking, a whipping, and a beating." Jackson "Gooseball" Fielder
"More than once I wiped tears from my eyes and turned my head so the children wouldn’t see, but I always stood behind my husband when he administered discipline. I knew he was doing what was biblically correct. And the children didn’t die!" Mrs. Morrow Graham,
mother of the Reverend Billy Graham, They Call Me Mother Graham (Revell Co.,1977)
"My father was a gentleman and he expected us to be gentlemen....If we acted disrespectfully, if we did not observe the niceties of etiquette, he took us over his knee and whipped us with his belt. He had a strong arm and boy did we feel it." Prescott Bush, elder brother of President George Bush, Barbara T. Roessner, "Obedience, Diligence, and Fun: Bush’s ‘Extraordinary Family Life Recalled by Brother Prescott," Jacksonville Times-Courier, Jan. 15,1989.
"[T]he little girl in the diapers, would not receive her discipline. She cried and cried and [he] kept hitting her, trying to make her tears stop. ‘I wasn’t sure of myself,’ he recalls, ‘so I kept calling [a fellow church member]. I’d say, ‘She’s doing the same thing. I don’t know what to do.’ He told me, ‘you spank her till she breaks.’ So I spanked her and I spanked her and I spanked her. I was crying. She was crying. Her parents were crying. I called again. He said: ‘Spank her till she breaks.’ But [she] didn’t break and, after four hours, [he] couldn’t continue." Sharon Sexton, "Suffer the Children: A Vermont Sect Believes It’s Wrong to Spare the Rod," The Boston Phoenix, April 19,1983, p.6.
SECULAR RATIONAL
Custom
"The use of corporal punishment in this country as a means of disciplining school children
dates back to the colonial period." U.S. Supreme Court in Ingram v. Wright, 97 S.Ct. 1401
(1977), p. 1406.
No harm/No foul
"We are unwilling to say that mild or moderate corporate punishment is unrelated to the
achievement of any legitimate educational purpose." U.S. Supreme Court in Ingram v.
Wright, 97 S.Ct. 1401 (1977), p. 1406.
In "Side Effects of Punishment" the authors justify corporal punishment:
"Conspicuously absent from these studies [of side effects] is convincing evidence of serious,
lasting harm to the recipients of punishment, despite warnings of numerous authorities of
various theoretical persuasions. Most of the undesirable side effects described lasted only
for a few minutes or days, were quickly responsive to treatment if they did not disappear
spontaneously, and constituted a relatively small and ethically justified price to pay in return
for the elimination of much more detrimental behaviors."
RELIGIOUS RATIONALS
"Spanking is God’s idea." Roy Lessin, Spanking: Why, When, How?(1979)
The most often cited biblical authority for corporal punishment is cited at the end of Cross Body Block. See also, 2 Samuel 7:14; Psalms 89:32: Proverbs 20:30. But, compare the New Testament: Matthew 18:1-6; 18:10-11,14.
THE CHOICES
A child may not be subjected to physical punishment or other injurious or humiliating treatment.
PARENTHOOD AND GUARDIANSHIP CODE, SWEDEN 1979
The philosopher John Locke wrote in 1690 that "Beating...and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments, are not the discipline fit to be used in the education of those who would have wise, good, and ingenious men; and therefore very rarely to be applied, and that only on great occasions, and cases of extremity." Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1690)
"Esteem and disgrace are, of all others, the most powerful incentives to the mind, when once it is brought to relish them. If you can once get into children a love credit, and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principal, which will constantly work and incline them to the right." Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1690)
In 1831 Lydia Maria Child, one of the most influential writers of the antebellum era,
published The Mother’s Book, one of the earliest manuals for motherhood. Child
writes:
"I have said much in praise of gentleness. I cannot say too much. Its effects
are beyond calculation... The victims of oppression and abuse are generally stupid,
as well as selfish and hard-hearted."
In How to Really Love Your Child, D. Ross Campbell writes:
Anyone can beat a child with a rod as the primary way of controlling his behavior.
That takes no sensitivity, no judgment, no understanding, no talent."
In 1861 Reverend Horace Bushnell published Christian Nurture. He wrote about
parenting:
"So much easier is it to be violent than to be holy, that they substitute force for
goodness and grace, and are wholly unconscious of the imposture. It is frightful to think
how they batter and bruise the delicate, tender souls of their children, extinguishing in
them what they ought to cultivate, crushing that sensibility which is the hope of their
being, and all in the name of Christ Jesus."
Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care has sold upwards of fifty million copies
since first published in 1945. He writes:
"There are several reasons to try to avoid physical punishment, I feel. It
teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or
not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent for life. Some spanked children
feel quite justified in beating up on smaller ones. The American tradition of spanking may
be one cause of the fact that there is much more violence in our country than in any other
comparable nation - murder, armed robbery, wife abuse, child abuse."
DISCUSSION/ TEST QUESTIONS
Novel-related questions:
*What wrong decisions did Jackson make in raising his family? What should he have done differently?
*Did football contribute to the violence in the Fielder family? How?
*Would Knuck have been more or less violent if his father had spanked him?
*Does football provide a controlled outlet for violence or does it encourage violence?
*What should happen if both parents cannot agree on the method of discipline?
General questions:
*What are the benefits of corporal punishment to the child? To the parent?
*What are the adverse effects of corporal punishment? To the child? To the parent?
*To what extent is corporal punishment a parental choice? To what extent is corporal
punishment a custom?
*Would you remain friends with a person who physically assaulted you when you did something
wrong?
*What are some alternatives to corporal punishment?
*Is corporal punishment the easiest form of discipline?
*Should a parent escalate the severity of corporal punishment until his child obeys him?
*Are there limits to the severity of corporal punishment? If so, what are they?
*Why is it that corporal punishment is not illegal, but the same conduct between unrelated
persons would constitute battery?
*Why is it not generally acceptable for employers to train their workers using corporal
punishment? Are workers in need of more protection than children?
*If you saw a mother spanking a child in a grocery story, at what point would you
intervene?
*Is there a minimum and maximum age for children to be subjected to corporal punishment?
How do you arrive at those ages?
*At what point would you report your spouse to the police for cruelty to your child?
*Do you think a ten year old child is more likely to remember a parent’s kiss or a
spanking?
*If corporal punishment is an effective form of discipline, why don’t American’s whip
convicted prisoners?
*Should convicts be more protected by the law than children?
*How accurate was the doctor’s assessment (page 212) that Jackson "must be the
father of the most violent family in Little Rock."
*What is the most severe form of punishment a parent should administer?
*When does a spanking become a beating?
*What would the world be like if there were no corporal punishment? Do such places exist?
PRE-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
Cross Body Block is set in Little rock, Arkansas in 1969. It relies heavily on football as a setting. Experience indicates that students find the novel more engaging if they understand the historical and sports context of the novel.
Vocabulary:
AWOL
corporal punishment
ICBM
lynch mob
straight-jacket
Chronology:
World War II
Korean War
Vietnam War
My Lai Massacre
Manson murders
Personalities:
Coach Bear Bryant
Cassius Clay
Albert Einstein
Genghis Khan
Vince Lombardi
Norman Rockwell
Gale Sayers
The Three Stooges
POST-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
Can differentiate between corporal and other punishments.
Understands the cultural bias towards corporal punishment
Realizes that corporal punishment has well reasoned opposition
Realizes that there are alternatives to corporal punishment
Understands the connection between corporal punishment and a violent society
Realizes that the decision to resort to corporal punishment need not be biased merely on custom
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Phillip J. Greven, Jr., Spare the Child (New York: Vintage Books, 1990)
Phillip J. Greven, Jr., Child-Rearing Concepts, 1628 - 1861: Historical Sources
(Itasca, Ill. : F.E. Peacock, 1973)
J. Arthur Hoyles, Punishment in the Bible (London: Epworth Press, 1986)
Roy Lessin, Spanking: Why, When, How? (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1979)
Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of
Violence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Girous, 1983)
Guide Copyright Rick Norman 1997, 1998, 1999.
