Does beating or spanking children cause them to be more aggressive? How do you feel about physically punishing students or your children? Do you think that this sort of behavior is primitive? Well according to the initial data gathered by Dr. Kenneth Dodge a professor at Duke University it does make children become more aggressive. In simpler terms the more a child was spanked the more aggressive he or she becomes.
However, that data was based on mostly Caucasian families. In order to condemn corporal punishment, the scientific community wanted to replicate the results in other ethnicities. So Dodge did another study on 453 kids both black and white from kindergarten through eleventh grade. That inclusive data revealed something else. The more the black families spanked their kids the less aggressive their children became.
These results were alarming and Dodge enlisted a team of fourteen scholars from around the world to study these results further. In white families children were spanked less frequently. Spanking was seen as taboo. It was saved only for the worst offenses when the parent was very angry and had lost their temper. Whereas in the black community it was something every kid went through.
Aside from the black and white studies a University of Texas study found that Conservative Protestants spanked their children 3 or more times a week. That study found no negative effects because it was normal.
So how does this relate to teaching? Well, minor punishments and consequences such as standing can be used for classroom management. In my experience these punishments or consequences work quite well as long as you're consistent in enforcing it.
In this video the teacher makes some reference to standing as a form of punishment. He also notes that positive reinforcement is effective yet doesn't always work.
You can learn more about physical or corporal punishment here: