Why does the state permit violence against children? There are a number of reasons. First, parental privilege is a rationalization. In the past, the law was giving its approval to the biblical injunction against sparing the rod.

Second, while everyone agrees that the state must act to remove children from their homes when there is danger of serious physical or emotional harm, many child advocates believe that state intervention in the absence of serious injury is more harmful than helpful.

Third, courts and legislatures tread carefully when their actions intrude or threaten to intrude on a relationship protected by the Constitution. In 1923, the Supreme Court recognized the “liberty of parent and guardian to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” More recently, in 1977, it upheld the teacher’s privilege to use corporal punishment against schoolchildren. Read together, these decisions give the constitutional imprimatur to parental use of physical force.

Under the best conditions, small children depend utterly on their parents for survival. Under the worst, their dependency dooms them. While it is questionable whether anyone or anything could have saved Elizabeth Steinberg, it is plain that the law provided no protection.

To the contrary, by justifying the use of physical force against children as an acceptable method of education and control, the law lent a measure of plausibility and legitimacy to her parents’ conduct.

More than 80 years ago, in the teeth of parental resistance and Supreme Court doctrine, the New York State Legislature acted to eliminate child labor law. Now, the state must act to eliminate child abuse by banning corporal punishment. To break the cycle of violence, nothing less will answer. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the death of Elizabeth Steinberg, it is this: spare the rod and spare the child.  

 

51. The New York State law seems to provide least protection of a child from violent parents of ____________.

A. a family on welfare               

B. a poor uneducated family

C. an educated black family              

D. a middle-class white family

 

52. “Sparing the rod” (in boldface) means ____________.

A. spoiling children                     

B. punishing children

C. not caring about children              

D. not beating children

 

53. Corporal punishment against schoolchildren is _____________.

A. taken as illegal in the New York State  

B. considered being in the teacher’s province 

C. officially approved by law

D. disapproved by school teachers  

 

54. From the article we can infer that Elizabeth Steinberg is probably the victim of ____________.

A. teachers’ corporal punishment           

B. misjudgment of the court

C. parents’ ill-treatment                  

D. street violence

 

55. The writer of this article thinks that banning corporal punishment will in the long run _____________.

A. prevent violence of adults

B. save more children

C. protect children from ill-treatment              

D. better the system

 

Passage 5

With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying methods of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of literature, or, at least, as a distinct, even though a slightly disreputable, offshoot of the traditional novel.

The detective story is probably the most respectable (at any rate in the narrow sense of the word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of university scholars, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Disastrous deaths may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, but the world in which they happen, the village, seaside resort, college or studio, is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizably human and consistent as our less intimate acquaintances. A story set in a more remote African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, and most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably true background. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modern intellectual critics and creators of “significant” novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from real life nagging gently, we secretly take delight in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human detective, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent.