Abstract:

This paper aims to offer a reflection on the role of educational and care professionals in order to prevent and tackle the phenomenon of corporal punishment of minors in the home.

As recently stated by the International NGO Council on violence Against Children Report, "10 years on: Global Progress & Delay in ending violence against children – the rhetoric & the reality" (2016), corporal punishment continues to be the most common form of violence experienced by children throughout the world, even though with different percentages in the various countries (UNICEF, Hidden in Plain Sight, 2014).

Despite many on-going battles on this subject from an institutional perspective at an international level (UN Study on Violence Against Children, 2006; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment no. 13- The right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence) and at the European level (Council of Europe Policy guidelines on integrated national strategies for the protection of children from violence, CM/Rec(2009)10) and from an integrated perspective, made up of institutions, NGOs and communities (such as the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, www.endcorporalpunishment.org ) the practice of corporal punishment in the home remains a challenge and it is part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for the 2030 Agenda (goal 16,2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children).

In this panorama, a specific role can be played by the professionals of education (such as teachers and educators of early childhood education and/or care services), who can be considered a precious resource in this battle (Walsh & Farrel, 2008; McKee & Dillenburger, 2012).

Following a pedagogical-psychoanalytical perspective (Miller, 1980; 1996), the paper will present a study on the role that the professional of education can play in preventing it.

Firstly, the professionals involved in education can help parents and adults in general in building up a non-violent culture of education, by finding a different perspective through which to interpret and implement the educational relationship, including managing some ambiguous polarities, such as permission/punishment, freedom/regulation.

At the same time, the topic of corporal punishment of children in home needs a sort of emotional competence from the education professionals, in order to be faced, because it is closely connected with inner dimensions such as the personally lived experiences of violence, the meanings given to the relationship between adult and child, the fear/desire of power related to the violence itself. Corporal punishment of children by parents keeps an inner aspect related with the personal story of violence experienced by women and men during their lifetime, and especially during their childhood, as violent educational practices has been proven as remaining a sort of ‘family tradition’ which is passed down over generations, where the victims of violence become the perpetrator of violence against their own children in terms of transgenerational transmission (Schützenberger, 1993; 2005).

The study, indeed, is going to demonstrate the need for the education professionals involved to have a specific training process for dealing with the issue of corporal punishment, which is related to the main question of violence against children.

Keywords:

Violence against children, education and care centres, professionals training, rights of the child.