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School official advocates spanking
MATTAPOISETT, Mass., A pastor who just took over as assistant principal at a Massachusetts middle school has sparked outrage because he advocates spanking children.
In an online video of a church lecture, since taken down, Silas Coellner urges parents to use the "Christian discipline" of spanking children when they begin to crawl and calls it "critical" to raising them, the Boston Herald reported Monday.
Coellner, 40, of Mashpee, Mass., will oversee discipline at Old Rochester Regional Junior High School in Mattapoisett.
He told the Herald he does not plan to have students spanked at the school.
"I'm not (spanking) other people's kids. It's all prescribed. You don't wing it. I'm not doing it alone and I'm not doing it privately," said Coellner, who said he spanks his children, ages 6, 8 and 10. "It's about teachable moments. I never, ever, ever want to harm a child."
The video of Coellner's lecture at Calvary Chapel Cape Cod had been carried on the church's Web site for six months before being taken offline
He told the Herald the lecture was meant to convey his belief: "If you don't discipline them, then you hate them."
In the video, he urged parents to "apply the board of education to the seat of learning" and suggested they start spanking early.
"I have this little bundle of innocence. When do I start dealing with them?" Coellner said in the video. "There's something about when they reach that crawling stage, I have found, in my experience, when you can suddenly see that heart of defiance, of rebellion for the first time. That's when you begin."
Kathleen Wolf, a psychiatric nurse from Arlington, Mass., who failed in 2007 to make Massachusetts the only state in the nation to ban corporal punishment in the home, called Coellner's message disturbing.
"What an example of depth of ignorance," Wolf said. "The concern is that someone in this kind of position gives a very strong, explicit message in public."
MATTAPOISETT, Mass., A pastor who just took over as assistant principal at a Massachusetts middle school has sparked outrage because he advocates spanking children.
In an online video of a church lecture, since taken down, Silas Coellner urges parents to use the "Christian discipline" of spanking children when they begin to crawl and calls it "critical" to raising them, the Boston Herald reported Monday.
Coellner, 40, of Mashpee, Mass., will oversee discipline at Old Rochester Regional Junior High School in Mattapoisett.
He told the Herald he does not plan to have students spanked at the school.
"I'm not (spanking) other people's kids. It's all prescribed. You don't wing it. I'm not doing it alone and I'm not doing it privately," said Coellner, who said he spanks his children, ages 6, 8 and 10. "It's about teachable moments. I never, ever, ever want to harm a child."
The video of Coellner's lecture at Calvary Chapel Cape Cod had been carried on the church's Web site for six months before being taken offline
He told the Herald the lecture was meant to convey his belief: "If you don't discipline them, then you hate them."
In the video, he urged parents to "apply the board of education to the seat of learning" and suggested they start spanking early.
"I have this little bundle of innocence. When do I start dealing with them?" Coellner said in the video. "There's something about when they reach that crawling stage, I have found, in my experience, when you can suddenly see that heart of defiance, of rebellion for the first time. That's when you begin."
Kathleen Wolf, a psychiatric nurse from Arlington, Mass., who failed in 2007 to make Massachusetts the only state in the nation to ban corporal punishment in the home, called Coellner's message disturbing.
"What an example of depth of ignorance," Wolf said. "The concern is that someone in this kind of position gives a very strong, explicit message in public."