Strategy for Presenting Content: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Listener Needs: Safety, Social, Self-esteem, Self-actualization
Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that non-physical forms of discipline are more ethical and effective.
Thesis Statement: Use of corporal punishment as child discipline is both unethical and ineffective.
“When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking – the first of his life. And she told him that he would have to go outside and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.”
All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy onto her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because violence begins in the nursery – one can raise children into violence.”
Thesis statement. Hitting or spanking a child will only teach them violence. If the child does learn to behave it is only out of fear. It is more effective to explain to the child why their behavior was wrong and devise a reasonable punishment.
Transition: According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 142,000 children in the United States are severely injured each year by Corporal Punishment. 18,000 of these children suffer a permanent...