Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- Researchers discovered a four-fold increase in verified cases of child abuse when report cards were sent home on Friday as compared to other days.
- Corporal punishment is legal throughout America, including in many public and most private schools.
- A child is hit, on average, every 30 seconds in American public schools.
I certainly remember that feeling when I was young: The dreaded Friday that report cards went home. My grades were mostly good, though there would inevitably be that class I lagged behind in. And as our brains are constructed, we focus on outliers, not the string of victories. The D among the As and Bs became the focal point.
As it turns out, some kids have more to fear than others. That’s what caused Dr. Melissa Bright to conduct research on the day report cards were sent home. She had been told disturbing information by her peers: Child abuse spikes when sent home on Fridays. She couldn’t find any studies documenting this, so she conducted her own.
Turns out the anecdote was true.
On Saturdays following report card Fridays, cases of child abuse verified by the Florida Department of Children and Families were four times higher than other Saturdays. When report cards were issued earlier in the week, however, there was no increase in abuse cases.
Spanking harms children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics | TIME
Bright, at the University of Florida’s Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies, teamed up with Dr. Randall Alexander, at Jacksonville’s UF College…
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