{"id":3323,"date":"2011-06-07T10:03:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T16:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orijinculture.com\/community\/?p=3323"},"modified":"2011-06-07T10:04:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T16:04:00","slug":"corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporal Punishment: Child Abuse or an Acceptable Part of Culture?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/iframe> \n \n\u201cMy mom is sending me back to the Phillipines because she thinks I\u2019m too rude.\u00a0 She said that she can\u2019t beat me here because she would get into trouble.\u00a0 She is sending me back so that I can be taught respect and morals and they will beat you to make sure you learn these things!\u201d<\/p>\nI remember when I was 14 my best friend informed me that her mother was sending her back to the Philippines. While many would have considered her \u2018 just a normal North American teenager\u2019 because she was rude, rebellious and full of attitude; her mother refused to accept her as such.\u00a0 Instead, her mother felt that she lacked the necessary morals and respect demanded by their culture and traditions.\u00a0 As a result, she was sent back to learn these things and she knew that part of her learning process will require her being beaten.<\/p>\nGrowing up in the Caribbean, corporal punishment\u00a0 (ie. spanking, beating, \u2018licks\u2019) was and still is considered as normal and acceptable part of life. The practice is often used as a form of discipline at home and in school.\u00a0 Unlike here in North America and in many European countries, no one ever felt the need to intervene when a child was getting \u2018licks\u2019 as it was seen as a necessary form of discipline. When I see an unruly child in public, I sometimes catch myself muttering under my breath \u201cthat child needs to be sent back home so he\/she can get some good licks and learn some manners and respect!\u201d\u00a0 While I hated being at the receiving end of this form of punishment, I was never forced to question its validity or look at it as a form of \u2018abuse\u2019 until I came to Canada.<\/p>\nWhile I find some of the footage in the above video to be quite disturbing and I do not believe that corporal punishment is the most effective means of instilling lessons about life, tradition and culture, I can\u2019t help but consider the points presented by Joanna Fuima, the lady who runs the program.\u00a0 Samoans, like most native or ethnic minorities in Eurocentric societies, constantly battle to preserve their culture and traditions, while at the same time trying to \u2018fit in\u2019 to these societies, so that they too can be successful.\u00a0 Most of us throughout the African Diaspora know what a daunting task this is.<\/p>\nThe kids who go to Joanna\u2019s program have been deemed to be \u2018troublemakers\u2019 and she believes that many of them lack the pride and respect demanded by their culture and traditions.\u00a0 As a result, she sees her methods, which involves excessive beatings, as a means of instilling these missing qualities in these misguided youths.\u00a0 As she noted in the video, the kids \u201cneed to rebuild that respect and get back to the roots and make them understand themselves and respect.\u201d<\/p>\nWhile Joanna\u2019s methods of teaching culture and instilling pride are controversial and in my opinion, grossly inappropriate, her program has been successful in helping these troubled kids turn their lives around.\u00a0 As seen in the video, one of her past students even praised the program and the methods employed by Joanna because they helped him to his life around and correcting his \u2018bad\u2019 ways. However, despite the success of the program, one cannot help but react with a sense of disgust at the level on violence inflicted upon these youths.<\/p>\nBeing from the islands, beatings, or \u2018licks\u2019 as we call it, is not only accepted, it is deemed necessary. I also know this mentality to be part of many global south cultures. Here in North America, when we see a parent disciplining their children in public through the use of corporal punishment, we are quick to react with outrage at what we see as child abuse. While some people think it\u2019s acceptable to spank children, others are totally against any form of physical violence against children, regardless of how minor it may be.\u00a0 Those who use corporal punishment like to make claim to the fact that their children are better behaved and disciplined.\u00a0 However, there has also been numerous medical finding and reports in the negative psychological affects corporal punishment inflicts upon its recipients.<\/p>\nWhy do most cultures in the global south accept corporal punishment as a legitimate means of instilling discipline, while most of in the north look condemn the practice.\u00a0 Is it really an issue of culture, or is it just an issue of these people not having the resources or information available to them about the possible detrimental effects of the practice?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3331\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/2011\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/africanlanguage6\/\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3331\" title=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" src=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/africanlanguage6.jpg\" alt=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" width=\"635\" height=\"391\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3330\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/2011\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/child-abuse-licking3\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3330\" title=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" src=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/child-abuse-licking3.jpg\" alt=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" width=\"635\" height=\"391\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3329\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/2011\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/child-abuse-licking4\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3329\" title=\"child-abuse-licking4\" src=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/child-abuse-licking4.jpg\" alt=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" width=\"635\" height=\"391\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3328\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/2011\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/child-abuse-licking6\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3328\" title=\"child-abuse-licking6\" src=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/child-abuse-licking6.jpg\" alt=\"Corporal Punishment: child Abuse or an acceptable part of culture?\" width=\"635\" height=\"391\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3327\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/2011\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/child-abuse-licking5\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3327\" title=\"child-abuse-licking5\" src=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/child-abuse-licking5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"635\" height=\"391\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy mom is sending me back to the Phillipines because she thinks I\u2019m too rude.\u00a0 She said that she can\u2019t beat me here because she <a class=\"moretag signature-animation\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/corporal-punishment-child-abuse-acceptable-part-culture\/\">CONTINUE READING<\/a>","protected":false},"author":877,"featured_media":3327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2993],"tags":[4016,4015,3479,3481,4017,3893],"class_list":["post-3323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-cultures","tag-child-abuse","tag-corporal-punishment","tag-culture","tag-roots-2","tag-samoan","tag-tradition"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/child-abuse-licking5.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3334,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions\/3334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}