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Not sure what the article accompanying this illustration in today's New York Times is about. Something about a Jesuit college student expelled for an essay advocating corporal punishment or something. We're just a little distracted by it.

Okay, let's read the article and get past our juvenile knee-jerk first impression:

As a substitute teacher in the public schools here, Scott McConnell says students are often annoyed that he does not let them goof off in class. Yet he was not prepared for the sixth grader who walked up to his desk in November, handed in an assignment, and then swore at him.

The profanity transported him back to his own days at Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma in the 1980's, when there was a swift solution for wiseacres: the paddle.

"It was a footlong piece of wood, and hung on every classroom wall like a symbol, a strong Christian symbol," said Mr. McConnell, who is 26. "Nobody wanted that paddle to come down."

Okay, it's sort of hard to get past our juvenile knee-jerk first impression...

College Expels Student Who Advocated Corporal Punishment [NYT]