This paper discusses corporal punishment as a disciplinary method in American public schools. The effectiveness of corporal punishment is investigated. Chapter I introduces corporal punishment as a pertinent educational issue. Chapter II discusses the historical development of corporal punishment. Chapter III discusses the legal ramifications of corporal punishment. Chapter IV looks at surveys and studies that have been conducted in regard to the issue. Chapter V discusses a survey of teachers in Lewisville, Texas. Teachers responded to 42 statements pertaining to corporal punishment. Chapter VI concludes that research indicates that corporal punishment will not be effective unless it is administered harshly and consistently. The paper concludes that corporal punishment will not be necessary if higher educational institutions train teachers in alternative methods.

This dissertation establishes that the Evangelical Anabaptists lived a noticeably distinctive Christian life when compared with their peers, accounts for their committed pursuit of holiness, and describes the outcome of that commitment. The sources used include the arranged archival source material in the Tauferakten, confessions, tracts, letters, debates, martyrologies, miscellaneous writings of the Anabaptists, and subsequent scholarship on the subject.

This study delineates the basic concepts and analytical techniques of contemporary French structuralists, namely Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, Althusser, and Foucault, and critically examines the contribution of their formulations to sociological theory and the implication of such formulations on the methodological orientation in sociology.

Walker Percy differs from other American novelists in that he started writing fiction relatively late in life, after being trained as a physician and after considerable reading and writing in philosophy. Although critics have appreciated Percy's skills as a writer, they have seen Percy above all as a novelist of ideas, and, accordingly, the majority of critical articles and books about Percy has dealt with his themes, especially his philosophical themes, as well as with his philosophical sources. This study explores, therefore, the critical response to philosophical ideas in Percy's five novels to date, as evidenced first by reviews, then by the later articles and books. The critical response developed gradually as critics became aware of Percy's aims and pointed out his use of Christian existentialism and his attacks upon Cartesianism, Stoicism, and modern secular gnosticism. These critical evaluations of Percy's philosophical concerns have sometimes overshadowed interest in his more purely artistic concerns. However, the more a reader understands the underlying philosophical concepts that inform Percy's novels, the more he may understand what Percy is trying to say and the more he may appreciate Percy's accomplishment in expressing his philosophical ideas so skillfully in fictional form. Critics and readers may …

Among the most important characters in contemporary writer Anne Tyler's nine novels of modern American life are her skillfully-drawn managing women who choose the family circle as the arena in which to use their skills and exert their influence. Strong, competent, independent, capable of caring for themselves, their husbands, their children, and others, too, as well as holding outside jobs, these women are the linchpins of their families. Among their most outstanding qualities are their abilities to endure hardships with heads high and skills unhampered. Within this broad category of managing women, Tyler clearly delineates two types of managers: the regenerative managing woman and the rigid managing woman. A major character in every novel, the regenerative managing woman not only endures, she also adapts. The key to her development and her strength is her capacity for trying again, renewing herself, and her family relationships. The evolution of a vital regenerative woman from a lonely childhood through the beginning of her vibrant womanhood is a key element in every Tyler novel. This development always includes an escape from her original family? an attempt to establish her own family; at least one major hardship that often sends her reeling home; and finally, …