a hump day

students in mississippi go right past euphemism and call wednesday "sex day." something to do with a higher rate of early dismissals.

anyway, i'm totally exhausted. summer school from 7:30am-11:30am. lunch 'till 1. class 'till 4. run. eat. grades. lesson plan. rinse. repeat.

**

i seem to have burned (or at least burdened) some bridges today by arguing that the rhetorical scapegoat of "it's a cultural difference/perspective/issue" is an ineffective procedure for critically approaching the legality/practice of corporal punishment in the schools of this wonderful state.

note: it's legal, and practiced, in the state of mississippi to use phyical methods of discipline (i.e. giving kids "licks" in lieu of behavioral restrictions [detention, suspension]) .

further note: disciplinarians must give children the choice between a given amount of licks and a non-violent punishment.

further note: many children prefer to be hit (perhaps - in some cases - because this physical voilence is a lesser evil and/or pales in comparison to what they do/may face at home; perhaps, also, it's a non-choice in the face of warped masculine honor; either way, this is seems an odd pattern of sadism).

bullets of response: the code of law is a living document; it's not a complete stretch to think of this sort of punishment as cruel and unusual, thus constitutionally suspect; i'm not aware of any other case where we give people this sort of choice in their own punishment (oftentimes, however, people indicted for an offense are (i believe) given the choice between jailtime and a fine - this, of course, clearly has its own blend of socioeconomic implications) - i'm thinking of an agreeably extreme case where one would give someone the choice between life in prison and the death plenalty (though, i'm aware of cases where people serving life terms have argued - unsuccessfully, as far as i know - for their own swift deaths); the historicized list of similar arguments (all who experienced a shift in legality over time) rears some ugly heads - slavery, jim crow, institutionalized mysogyny, eugenics policies, nazi germany - all of these were at one point (and oftentimes successfully in the eyes of contemporaries) argued as untouchably cultural differences/culturally disjoint axioms/expressions (see also: putin's russia on ukraine, hussein's iraq on biowarfare experiments, xiaopeng's (sp?) china on taiwan, khomeini's iran on women's rights) that outsiders lack a rich understanding of, thus are unqualified in commenting on; (perhaps most convincing from a practical perspective) studies show that this form of discipline is rather ineffective (not to mention the possible side effects [a model for a correlation between physical violence and authority - no doubt having resonance with domestic violence, violent crime]); etc.

please, please correct any factual errors in the above statements. also, feel free to have a word with me in the comments section. also, please note that - at its core - most of my arguments technically neither disagree nor agree with coporeal punishment. rather, i've aimed to show the insuffuciency of arguments ending at "it's legal" and "it's cultural," given other cases where these arguments have in fact masked what is historically considered ethically questionable/reprehensible [granted, this is majority-smoothed view of ethics)]. that is, the argument that coporeal punishment is useful/reasonable within the terms of a culture/a cultural perspective has awkward bretheren in the realm of precedent. if the intent is to show that the conditional "if it's a cultural issue/it's dependent on a cultural prospective, then it's ok/useful" is true, then there are many cases where we have things that are agreeably cultural issues, which seem to be universally regardes as not ok/not useful. so, we need a richer argument for corporeal punishment: either these are not cultural issues, or this is an invalid conditional. also, i'm loathe to be satisfied with the conditional "if it's a cultural issue/it's dependent on a cultural perspective AND i'm an 'outsider' within this cultural scope, then i'm unqualified to have any substantive views on the issue." granted, this is an incredibly difficult issue, but i'm going to get a bit fiery if people want to dismiss it behind a cloud of either socioethic pluralism or hypercomplexity - especially in the face of my newness to the system.

that being said, my virginal idealism has survived another day.

speaking of virgins,

(1) i gave a lesson on e.e. cummings's (part of the high school must-read, it seems) "since feeling is first," and robert herrick's "to the virgins, to make much of time" (cough...cough...dead poets). comments from students afterwards "i like you," "have you ever considered being a movie actor," and "drinking all that coffee and waving you arms around... you scare me."

(2) per capita attractiveness for females in this state (or at least around ole miss - a top 10 in a recent playboy poll) is rather high. males, not so much. so, you see a lot of plain looking fellows driving around in mustangs with gorgeous southern belles. ah, the american dream.