Islam and Corporal Punishment, Are we at an evolutionary dead end?

A lot depends on the specific circumstances, obviously, but an assault such as the one in Saudi Arabia would prompt an expulsion from most US public schools. I don’t believe the police would get directly involved unless the act was so egregious the victim of the assault presses criminal charges. A thirteen year old girl trying to prevent an administrator from forcibly taking her cell phone is an important extenuating circumstance. In the US, educators are taught not to physically confiscate personal items from a student. From my experience, the best way to deal with such situations is (1) training for educators on how to handle these situations without escalating them and (2) a discipline policy that stresses logical consequences over punishments. Proper training probably would have prevented the situation because the principal would not have tried to forcibly take the cell phone but used other persuasive techniques, including a call home to the parent; and a discipline policy that is not so severe as to provoke these kinds of desperate acts over a relatively minor rule violation. What would have been the consequence had the girl simply surrendered the cell phone? That’s the question I keep asking myself.

This post has been edited by Bashar on Feb 5 2010, 09:22 PM