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Spare the rod, save it for the parents

Beat your kids.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's not politically correct.

Discipline your children often and consistently, using methods that you have found effective.

If that discipline includes corporal punishment in a way that does not draw blood, break bones or a child's spirit, then parent away.

But schools should not be in the beating business.

Schools are where children go to learn, a lesson that Memphis City Schools board member Rev. Kenneth Whalum still hasn't learned.

At Monday's school board meeting, the good reverend proposed that corporal punishment be returned to Memphis City Schools. There was no discussion, because no other board member would vote to suspend the rules to allow discussion on a new motion.

The only board member, according to The Commercial Appeal, to verbalize their support for Whalum's suggestion was Sharon Webb, not exactly the board's go-to gal for probing analysis.

Anyone who witnessed her exceptionally embarrassing yet overly polite performance in the August 2009 mayoral debate knows that for her own good, Webb should be very quiet. Always and forever. (Bless her heart.)

I'm hoping Whalum's failure to even get his colleagues to agree to talk about it Monday is a sign that the current board feels as the board did in 2005, when it decided to remove corporal punishment from schools, at the urging of then-Supt. Dr. Carol Johnson.

In the 2003-2004 school year, more than 13,000 students were paddled, for a total of 29,829 spankings; more than 43 percent had been spanked two or more times and 18 students were paddled 20 times or more.

Then-school board member and longtime critic of corporal punishment Lora Jobe asked in 2004, "You hear principals say, 'I had to paddle little Johnny five times,' and the next question is, 'Is it working?' "

Paddlings were replaced with the Blue Ribbon initiative, designed to intervene early, but not in a physical fashion.

Parents and teachers complained then that Blue Ribbon wasn't enough. Blue Ribbon, renamed Positive Behavior Intervention Support, is still in place.

Whalum's suggestion puts him in good (and crazy) company: Between the terms of Johnson and current Supt. Dr. Kriner Cash, both of whom oppose corporal punishment in schools, then Memphis mayor and superintendent wannabe Willie Herenton suggested spanking younger students.

Whalum's paddling proposal will be open for discussion at a July board meeting, even though his solution is an incomplete answer to a problem that should not be the schools' to solve.

If students are arriving at school so unruly that the only way to get them to act right is with a rod, then that is the fault of the parents.

The district could decide to try to solve the problem by paddling this child at school, but the home environment that created this blessed hellion remains the same.

Now, if somehow frustrated teachers could paddle the parents of the misbehaving kids, that'd be an option worth considering. (Just joking, but not really.)

Returning corporal punishment in schools is to largely give up on the notion that parents should -- wait for it -- parent.

Parents should send their children to school ready to learn, or at the least able to sit still and be quiet so other students who are ready to learn can.

When a misbehaving child arrives at school, and paddling surfaces as the only solution to curb unwanted behavior, the parent should be sorely ashamed.

He or she has failed to do their job, and now the school, with all its other challenges, is going to have to try to do it for them.

Personal and parental responsibility is what's needed, not paddles for principals.

Contact Wendi C. Thomas at (901) 529-5896 or e-mail thomasw@commercialappeal.com.