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Show Punishment can be preventive When this column appeared several weeks ago, a caller complained com-plained that I had missed the point on corporal punishment. "Punishment doesn't work," she said. "If you punish a child, he or she only learns the negatives. If a student creates a problem in class, the teacher or school administrator should not victimize the student physically, but rather offer an alternative alter-native mode of behavior. Rewards always work better than punishment I I ' . BRYAN GRAY Columnist Shreeve was driving his police cruiser through the Granger High parking lot when he saw four would-be hoodlums gathered in a less-than-friendly exhibition. Three of the students were pointing their fingers at him and one of the teens was aiming a pistol at the chiefs windshield. This was enough to get officer Shreeve aroused. Cops may grimace when surly youths growl or call policeman "pigs." But Jhey get downright nasty when people point pistols at their windshields. The policeman said he considered con-sidered pressing his gas pedal and ramming into the teen-agers. But worried about flying bodies, officer Shreeve calmly made a split-second decision. He jammed on his car brakes, flew out of his police car and wrapped his arms around the 16-year-old who was flirting with destiny. "It was just a toy gun," chuckled the 16-year-old idiot. "I was just joking around. Earlier today I was pointing the same gun at the students in the hall. ' ' The police officer was not amused, amus-ed, and the kid was booked in a youth detention center on suspicion of assaulting an officer. Hopefully, the officer explained to the young man that pointing guns at policemen can be hazardous to one's health. Hopefully, the officer didn't reward the kid with a candy bar as a means of promoting better behavior. And on the same page of the newspaper, another story told of a 21 -year-old inmate at the Utah State Prison. The man had sued correctional correc-tional officers for ' 'cruel and unusual punishment" after prison guards fired stun gun darts into his anatomy. The darts, he said, had hurt, "making my body jerk and causing scars on my rib cage which lasted about one year." t he reason the guards made his body jerk is that earlier in the day the man had refused to leave his prison cell and had admittedly thrown "liquid fecal matter" on one of the guards. There are many dangerous behaviors in this world. One of them is wearing a Saddam Hussein button at a VFW rally. Another is tossing urine at a prison guard or pointing pistols at nervous police officers. The Granger High student and the prison inmate were probably astonished at the quick and punishing response and I suspect the reason they were perplexed is that they had not often seen this form of punishment. In the past, pointing a gun at a teacher led only to a warning slip and an invitation to attend summer school. In the past, throwing urine on a social worker might lead to a stem look and the compilation of a further psychological profile. If both of these young men had been properly punished in prior years, they might not have been so hasty in challenging law enforcement enforce-ment authority. In both cases, the young men might have become better risks for life insurance. In fact, punishment might have been a positive element in their young lives. It sure would beat having a police cruiser crash into your kneecaps at 45 miles per hour! The lady even had statistics to back up her point, although I heard no figures on the success rate of encouraging en-couraging a knife-wielding punk to turn over his weapon by offering the kid a candy bar. "If punishment doesn't work," I answered, "the problem may he in the fact that kids are unaccustomed to receiving it. You obviously haven't read the morning newspaper." She admitted she hadn't ''Because the morning newspaper gives two prime examples exam-ples of how young people have not been taught the basics of life," I continued. The news reports were grim. In West Valley City, for example, exam-ple, Assistant Police Chief Steve |