Related Data

• Adrian Peterson, a Pro Bowl running back for the Minnesota Vikings, has been accused of child abuse for stuffing the leaves of a branch into his 4-year-old son’s mouth and then hitting him with a switch (the leafless branch) across the backs of his bare legs leaving open wounds.
• Children who experience physical punishment are 59 percent more likely to have alcohol dependence, 41 percent more likely to have depression and 24 percent more likely to have panic disorder, compared with those who received no physical punishments. (Huffington Post, Spanking Children & Mental Health: Punishment Linked To Disorders Later In Life)
• 94% of parents of three and four-year-olds claim to have spanked their children in the past year. (childtrendsdatabank.org, as quoted in the NYT, 9-17-2014, Charles Blow)
• 77% percent of men and 65% of women between the ages of 18 and 65 agree that sometimes what a child needs is a “good hard spanking.” (childtrendsdatabank.org, as quoted in the NYT, 9-17-2014, Charles Blow)
• Spanking increases children’s long-term aggression towards peers and others. (NYT, George W. Holden, 8-14-2011)
• Studies attribute the use of corporal punishment to critical factors, like the parents’ upbringing, stress levels, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status and region of the country. These have shown that parents most adamantly committed to the practice of spanking tend to be from the South. They have less education and less wealth, and they experience more stress. (NYT, George W. Holden, 8-14-2011)

Sample Frame

Maybe some of you watch football, or at least have been following the controversies arising around violence off the field. I want to comment on this because I think it’s directly connected to powerful work that we’re doing here.

The latest controversy about violence off the field involves Adrian Peterson. He’s a Pro Bowl running back for the Minnesota Vikings. He was accused recently of child abuse for disciplining his four-year-old son with a switch (a leafless tree branch.) He is currently suspended from play while his team waits to see what happens legally before they decide on longer term employment consequences, if any.

While many would agree that the beating that Peterson gave his son was over the line, this situation has brought up a national dialogue about corporal punishment in general. There is well-documented evidence that it’s happening widely across racial lines. Ninety-four percent of parents of three and four-year-olds claim to have spanked their children in the past year. Seventy-seven percent of men and 65% of women between the ages of 18 and 65 agree that sometimes what a child needs is a “good hard spanking.”

There is much evidence that the effects of corporal punishment are negative for the child. The number of problem behaviors in adolescence is related to the amount of spanking a child receives. Spanking increases children’s long-term aggression towards peers and others. Children who experienced physical punishment were 59 percent more likely to have alcohol dependence, 41 percent more likely to have depression and 24 percent more likely to have panic disorder, compared with those who received no physical punishments.

On top of this quantitative data, we know that violence begets violence. Children learn what they live. If they experience violence at home when an adult is angry, we see that same kind of behavior at school. I would presume that many people sitting in this room were hit or spanked as kids. I presume that some of us may have hit children ourselves. We are evolving as a people. Just as our pedagogy is evolving as we learn more and more about how traditional pedagogy doesn’t work for all kids, so is our approach to discipline that yields improvement rather than shame. Many of us didn’t sit in car seats as children—we have evolved as a people as statistics have revealed the danger for children unrestrained in cars.

There is a temptation to conclude that this is a problem in the Black community since the person on the hot-seat at this moment is an African American football player. Several commentators have warned us in the last week to be careful about this conclusion. Given the statistics that I just quoted, this is a national problem—let us not create, as Jamelle Bouie of Slate urges, a Black pathology around corporal punishment. Yes it’s alive and well in the Black community and it’s alive and well in other racial communities in our midst. There are, however, significant socio-economic and geographic patterns—the higher the education level of the parents, the lower the chances that the parents will physically punish their children; more corporal punishment happens in the South than anywhere else. When we see patterns that emerge based on socio-economic status, we also must consider that violence is often the result of internalized oppression over generations.

Given how prevalent corporal punishment is in our society and how deeply ingrained it is, and given how much researchers know about its negative effects on children, how will this pattern change? It starts to change with us. We have communicated very clear expectations for our students and implemented Restorative Practices because we believe in the redemptive power of dialogue, empathy, and the chance to restore justice rather than the old model of punishment, which yields more shame and anger than anything else. A child who has been punished as the primary form of discipline—whether it’s a loss of recess, in-house suspension, writing lines, or cleaning the cafeteria, let alone getting hit—does not often re-engage in learning feeling restored, resolved, and ready, in the short term or in the long term. We have seen much evidence that the restorative approach works. (Insert an example of a situation at the school in which Restorative Practices yielded justice and redemption.) At school, we want our students to see the process and the results of Restorative Practices—hopefully from when they are in kindergarten through when they graduate as seniors.

Schools are often where social change begins and sustains. What if the current generation of young people experiences the power of restorative justice and makes restorative discipline choices when they become parents themselves? What if members of this generation take the helm of the criminal justice system and move it from the horribly punitive and ineffective system it is now to one of learning, dialogue, restoration, redemption, and support? That would mean that so many of our young men of color coming from backgrounds in poverty might not be destined for endless years in prison—it could mean that there were reasonable, fair, redemptive ways for them to take responsibility, make restitution, acquire the education and support and medical attention necessary for responsible living, and re-enter society.

As with so many aspects of our society, the prospect of the better future begins with us. Here’s to our passionate and dedicated work with Restorative Practices.

Related Data

• Rashawn Williams, a 14-year-old freshman at Sacred Heart, was stabbed to death on Tuesday, September 2^nd at 26^th and Folsom Streets. He was formerly a student at Buena Vista Horace Mann from kindergarten through eighth grade.
• Homicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers nation-wide. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• There were 2,545 Black male teenagers killed via homicide in 2010, more than all other racial groups combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• There have been 14 homicides in San Francisco since January, a 36% decrease from the 22 homicides recorded at the mid-point last year. (Vivian Ho, SFGate, July 6, 2014)

Sample Frame

I know that you are aware of the tragic situation that happened last week in the Mission when Rashawn Williams, a 14-year-old freshman at Sacred Heart, was stabbed to death by a peer. This awful incident has been weighing heavily on my heart, as an educator, as a parent, as a human. There are three things that I want to talk about related to Rashawn’s life and death that relate to our work here.

First, Rashawn was an accomplished student—responsible, sharp, curious. There were social dynamics in which he was involved that ultimately killed him. Rashawn died, allegedly, because of ongoing threats, beef, taunting, sometimes via social media and sometimes in person. The principal and teachers at Buena Vista Horace Mann knew Rashawn very well and loved him dearly—he had been at BVHM for nine years! His family and his teachers and principal were aware of the troubling dynamics and took the steps they could to interrupt them—even very significant ones. This should serve as a reminder to us as educators—that our awareness of our students’ lives outside of their grades and academic achievement is also paramount. This reminds me of a story that I read recently about a fourth grade teacher who asked her students every Friday to write down two people that they want to sit with the following week and two students they didn’t want to sit next to. She didn’t do this because she really felt the need to seat students in their most desired configurations. She did it to gather data every week about who is regularly getting requested, who never gets requested, who used to get requested and now doesn’t. For that teacher, it was a crafty way of observing social dynamics between students so that she knew where to provide more support, more love, more skill-building, more scaffolding. The more we know about our students’ experiences, by asking them directly, by building trust, by listening to them authentically, the better the chances that we can interrupt what could be a fatal conflict between kids.

Second, I want to comment on the way that Rashawn’s and Michael Brown’s deaths were portrayed in the media. To note, it is significant that the media have repeatedly highlighted Rashawn’s and Michael’s academic success in reporting their deaths. Given the media’s frequent portrayal of young Black men as intimidating or threatening or nefarious, noting these young men’s promise and potential is both accurate and refreshing. Rashawn’s 4.0 GPA in middle school was repeated throughout the reporting on this awful incident. A fact that was repeated about Michael Brown was that he was about to start college. To take a different perspective on this reporting, what if those young men of color were not 4.0 or college-bound students? Would that make their deaths less tragic? What are we to infer through the media’s highlighting of their academic success? I fear that the implicit message is that young men of color who are not on a successful academic path are less valuable, less important, their lives are worth less than young men of color who are academically promising or white young men.

Every single one of our babies (or young people) is valuable. Every single one has brilliance. Every single one has promise. It’s our job to help them find their brilliance and to pursue development of that brilliance. It’s our job to unlock the power that young people have, and instill in them the hope and faith to survive and the skills to make a difference. (Insert an example of a student who is struggling academically but has a different kind of brilliance—how can that talent leverage other kinds of achievement?)

Finally, it’s imperative that we acknowledge that Rashawn’s alleged murderer was a peer—someone 14 or 15 years old. It’s important that we recognize that violence in the black/brown/poor community is not inherent, but rather a product of centuries of institutional and internalized oppression, and current hardships. Let us be wary against the construction of a narrative that young people from certain neighborhoods, from certain racial backgrounds, from certain ethnic groups, of certain genders, are inherently bad. Their choices can be bad, but they are not bad human beings. Let us acknowledge for a moment our responsibility to forgive and love children who make unbelievably bad choices.

Along with many others, I am mourning the loss of Rashawn Williams, and am still mourning the death of Michael Brown. Here, at (our school), let’s maximize the lives of the young people we have in front of us, let’s listen to them, let’s notice them for the complexity of who they are, let us love them.