At the moment, New Zealand is voting on whether it should be legal for parents to punch children in the face or hit them in the head with a piece of concrete - the last remnants of legal physical violence against children. Meanwhile, other places are still in the dark ages. A piece in the New York Times has highlighted that much of the US still permits corporal punishment in schools (and its the states you'd expect), and that disabled students are beaten more (because obviously, that'll "fix" them. Yeah, right...).
Clicking through to the actual report, I'm confronted with a picture of the preferred tool of American child abuse: a "paddle" - basically, a cricket bat. The impression is only reinforced by the NYT's description of one of these implements as being an inch thick. If you attacked an adult with such a weapon, you'd be going to jail. But beating children with these weapons is institutionalised across much of America.
Just another example of what a cruel and barbaric place the US is.
