Analysis Of Spanking Isn 'T Child Abuse: It's Common Sense'

On the CNN website, Ruben Navarrette wrote an article titled “Spanking Isn’t Child Abuse; It’s Common Sense” on the topic of how to educate children. The piece is targeted at parents who have little idea of what they should do to discipline their children. He stated that he is against child abuse, but he supports corporal punishment as a form of education. Ruben questioned the methods of “modern parents” by comparing their ways with the previous generation of parents. Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor, Daily Beast columnist and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Thus, he is an experienced writer. He was also a parent of three young children, ages 5, 6, and 7. In addition, Navarrette has a lot of experiences

Thus, Navarrette established his point about the weak approach of modern parents in education children. He then follows up with an example to make a contrast in effectiveness between the tradition style and the modern style. “My dad didn't roll like that. And neither did his father…we were terrified of the old man” (Navarrette). By presenting his experiences with his father’s method, he wants to assert his belief that fear is an excellence tool for the parents. Next, he gave a few examples about how modern style parenting does not work. He argues that “parents today are falling down on the job”, and punishment is a lesson; thus, it is the duty of the parents to teach their children the consequences (Navarrette). He did point out how far one should keep the punishment, such as not using dangerous objects or hitting without control

This is a weak start if he wanted to persuade his audience. Throughout the article, Navarrette makes a lot of claims based on personal opinions and experiences. Thus, there were not really any concrete facts or statistics presented. One can see that he only had examples, stories, and his experience to back up his point. In addition, there were not any expert opinions or research result on children psychology, which might be useful to give more information on the problem. Furthermore, he did not present the good points of non-corporal punishments. In fact, he does not even touch the other side of the argument. On the surface, the abundance about of evidences may convince the audience; but on close examination, his argument is quite weak. Thus, the overall effect of the argument is not