Purplehood wrote:So the question that arises in my mind is this:
Do we accept the present status quo and let Law Enforcement become our students surrogate parents or do we reverse the last 4+ decades of social engineering that has made it a literal crime to properly parent and once again resume that responsibility?
[and do we tolerate run-on sentences such as the one above?]
This is one of the reasons I'm hesitant to have children of our own, because you can't discipline children any more. The idea that sitting in a corner, or getting a "time out" is going to change a childs behavior is infantile at best, and giving them way too much credit. The application of swift decicive correction at the appropriate time teaches them that there are consequenses to their actions. Much like the mother wolf gives a nip and a growl to an unrully cub, parents should be able to do the same.
I'm not sure I understand the whole "physical punishment is abuse" argument. I fully support that sometims I had the snot wacked out of me, and have told my parents such. There are some children who do not listen to words, and I was one of them
. I would not be the person I am today without that reinforcement. For the same reason I that when I was 10 I didn't try and intimidate someone double my age and 2 feet taller than me (as seems to happen now-a-days 
). As for the topic of "abuse", my mother was abused when she was a child, and I have come to define abuse as lasting bruises, lascerations, broken bones, intentional ciggerette/cigar burns, NOT a swat on the rear which only offers momentary discomfort. When we start grouping spanking and beating till bloody into the same group as "abuse" I feel we have lost the resolution needed to seperate the correction, from the true abuse.