Any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has again declared his opposition to corporal punishment. This time he has indicated his intention to introduce legislation to make it illegal.

The word ‘corporal’ comes from the Latin word ‘corpus’ meaning ‘body’. The concept of corporal punishment came about around 1545 and refers to the beating of children by people in positions of authority.

Until fairly recently the conventional wisdom was to ‘spare the rod’ was to ‘spoil the child’. It was a new school year in the mid-60s when a parent turned up at the school my mother headed. She explained that she had suffered through eight pregnancies, but this child was the first that had “come out so nice and brown”. And she was therefore determined to do all she could to make her “come to something good”. To this end, she was appealing to my mother to beat the child “first thing every morning”.

Since the 1990s, however, there has been a significant shift in thinking. I suspect this has to do with research findings which established a clear link between physical punishment of children and negative developmental outcomes. So much so, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was established and, by 2000, it was ratified by 191 of the world’s 196 countries. The convention has been integrated into the legal and policy framework of many nations. Earlier this year, Lithuania became the 53rd State to have prohibited all corporal punishment of children — including in the family home. At least 55 more countries have expressed a commitment to be fully on board soon.

Earlier this year, Senator Pearnel Charles Jr, state minister for national security, commissioned a review of the agencies under his portfolio. It was revealed that 80 per cent of juveniles appearing in the family court were charged for violent offences. It was also revealed that they had never witnessed the peaceful resolution of a conflict, and physical punishment — punctuated with demeaning expletives — was the only way adults at home expressed displeasure.

One recommendation in that report is the reinforcement to people in charge of juvenile facilities that the use of pain compliance techniques in these facilities be strictly prohibited. Pain compliance techniques are those in which the staff would apply pain as the primary method of controlling juveniles.

One thing that became crystal clear when that skilful, machette-wielding mama was caught on video publicly beating her daughter, was that the society is still fully behind that sort of cruelty as an acceptable method of eliciting behavioural compliance. Stress, anger and frustration prevent these individuals from realising that the more they apply physical punishment, the less effective it becomes. For the civilised world, this perspective has changed long ago, as studies were able to establish links between physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency and spousal abuse in later life.

Early experiments had shown that pain elicits reflexive aggression. In an early modelling study, boys in grade one who watched a one-minute video of a boy being yelled at, shaken, and spanked with a paddle for misbehaving showed more aggression while playing with dolls than boys who had watched a one-minute video of non-violent responses to misbehaviour. In a treatment study, researchers showed that a reduction in harsh discipline used by parents of boys at risk for antisocial behaviour was followed by significant reductions in their children’s aggression.

I would be being unfair if I failed to mention that there is a small amount of noteworthy published research claiming that “…ordinary, non-abusive, disciplinary spanking of young children, administered by loving, well-intentioned parents” can have positive effects on the child.

My only concern with these studies is that the samples were taken from communities where the majority of respondents are educated, employed, from two-parent families in societies where there are serious sanctions for corporal punishment.

Things are a little different here. And who can predict when some well intentioned spanking will turn into something else? A single mother was telling me of her efforts to help her son to do well in the Grade Six Acheivement Test. I cringed in horror when she gave details of the cruelty visited on this child; the upper cuts, the jabs, and hooks when he gave a wrong answer, or was found playing. On at least three occasions she paused to say how she loved him and was prepared to go without food to ensure he got into a ‘good’ school. It’s a thin line, indeed, between love and hate.

There is no alternative than the infliction of pain and humiliation to show displeasure in most Jamaican families. And it’s not just poor families. Yet many still express ignorance and bewilderment at our crime statistics. It is this cruelty that is at the heart of our crime figures, the aggression and the general coarsening of a people known the world over as kind and friendly. We don’t have to batter, bully, and berate our children for them to “come to something good”. They won’t!

I would encourage Prime Minister Andrew Holness to pursue this matter. It is my hope that the prevailing culture of cruelty will not inspire those seeking political exposure, but nothing to offer, to use this as a political football.

The popular feeling is that “Government should not tell me how to raise my child”, and that regular, robust beatings are prerequisites for proper upbringing. In moments of loneliness, as he moves forward, may I remind our prime minister of Reinhold Neibuhr. In his fading years, our prime minister was still in short pants. So I will just point out that he was one of America’s leading public intellectuals for several decades. When news of his death came just after New Year’s Day in 1971, the New York Times printed a quote attributed to him: “The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.”

Do your work, Andrew Holness.

Glenn Tucker is an educator and a sociologist. Send comments to the Observer or glenntucker2011@gmail.com.