Tough love, but no hard feelings_美文

Tough love, but no hard feelings

One recent evening, when I got home after work, my wife told me about a major finding: Some parents of children in my son's class have been beating their children for poor performance at school.

While waiting to pick up their children, she said, several mothers compared notes on home physical punishment when words appeared to have failed to correct behaviors like being absent-minded or careless in their children.

One mom said she would cry outside her house after she spanked her son over home work. Another admitted that she and her husband took turns to play the bad cop. All said teachers had acquiesced to physical punishment at home although it was forbidden at school.

I've also been constantly at my wit's end with my own 7-year-old boy who could drift into a trance under my eyes while doing homework. Sometimes he could copy a spelling error 10 times even after he was shown the correct form.

His school gives quizzes and tests every week with results posted on social media along with student ID numbers. As time goes by, we've known the names behind the numbers and the ranking of our children in different subjects. It’s excruciating when we see our children’s scores falling on the wrong side of the curve.

In my despair, I’ve done search on a taobao.com, a popular e-commerce site, which turned up hundreds of wooden rulers or bamboo canes, all designed to strike the distraught student on the hands or across the rear.