（英文版）How can children be well educated? A prevailing bias is that punishments are at least one of the effective ways to educate children. The prejudice is based on a false analogy between children and criminals. Its assumption is that punishments serve a function of determent. Punishments, in fact, are to revenge. Even punishments signal, signify, or at least imply the pragmatic value of violence. To punish children is to tell them that they are expected to take the measure of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, but this clearly betrays our human virtue for “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”。 Unfortunately, so frequently have we human beings sought to the violence when we ask for the virtue and to the wars when we desire the peace. Superficially it is mere a child education issue, virtually this issue exerts immeasurable influences on human civilization and its various forms of conflicts, confusions, controversies, and contradictions.
Appealing to punishments logically assumes that children’s misbehaviors, delinquencies, or criminals stem, at least partially, from the consciousness of children that their behavior would not harm themselves. However, this will be clearly unable to account for the vandalism prevailing among some slums or ghettoes.
This logical analysis casts doubts on the bias that punishments can be employed under all circumstances. But this does not constitute a solid foundation to argue that punishments are always negative, nor can this be the evidence to conclude that punishments are always ineffective. The complexity of the issue thus makes it imperial to examine when, where, to whom, in which case the punishments can be employed in child education. Theoretically, it seems that exists a clear cut for people to distinguish between when punishments can be used and when not. Pragmatically, nevertheless, the imagined line is rather hard to discern or discover, even to the trained eyes. A five-year-old child blaspheming his neighbors, for instance, might pique the parents to punish the misdoer.
In this case the parents clearly manifest that the adults possess the power (if not the right) to appeal to violence when their own moral, ethic, or value is challenged, that violence (whatever the motivation of such violence) works well in case that the one who uses violence is physically stronger, and that the minors or the weak must be obedient to those who hold the power to slash.
This, ironically, is just the rules of all political games in human history. The Christian crusaders sloughed the Crescentates; the Japan Nazi killed the Asians; the whites discriminated and devastated the blacks. Enough! And believe it or not, this is part of the “noble” human culture whose pride feeds itself with the record of battles and conquests;---battles which proved nothing and settled nothing; conquests which shifted a boundary on the map, and put one ugly head instead of another on the coin which the people paid to the tax-gather. We finally trace the culture to its very roots: the child education. Cannot it be argued that punishments in child education breed the very seeds of wars?
Yet, alas, not all parents are the philosophers or preachers. They just cannot work out any other measures to discipline the kids. Punishments seem to be the natural or instinct response to the overwhelming majority of parents world around. However, if we deny or denounce the adult behavior to punish children, we must find out an effective and feasible system of ways to teach the parents how to address such issues encountered in child breeding and parenting. But, do we have? Alas!
Thus until such a system of child education has been worked out, no one can draw a telling conclusion to persuade the parents forsake the punishments. This looms vexing. So what? The world per se is such as it is. Troubles continue and the solutions remain to be revealed. This is just the very picture in which we are part.
