In Figure 1, the parents are trying to stop their children from fighting physically with one another. But how are they punishing the children? That’s right – by beating them. In other words they are giving their children the message: “Don’t fight with each other by using physical violence, but when you are an adult, you can use physical violence to discipline your children!” This is very confusing to children, and is more likely to make them turn to physical punishment of others, more than any other means of solving a conflict, because they have not observed any other way of dealing with anger. I’m sure as educators, this is very important for you to think about since corporal punishment is banned in our schools, but we too may not have learnt other approaches. You will read more about this in Reading 1.4: “We need an alternative to the pain and fear of corporal punishment”. We will come back to this issue after the section on Behaviourism.