The debate over spanking goes back many years, but the essential question often evades discussion: does spanking actually work? In the short term, yes. You can correct immediate misbehavior with a slap or two on the rear-end or hand. But what about the long-term impact? Can spanking lead to permanent, hidden scars on children years later?

 　　在教育小孩的问题上，关于要不要打板子的争论由来已久。但是人们往往回避了这样一个本质问题：打屁股有用吗？——从短期来看，是有效果，打手心、打屁股可以立即纠正孩子的错误行为。但是考虑到对孩子长远的影响呢？打板子会不会在孩子内心的深处形成长大以后都抹不去的伤痕呢？

　　On Friday, a sociologist from the University of New Hampshire, Murray Straus, presented a paper at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, suggesting that corporal punishment does leave a long-lasting mark — in the form of lower IQ. Straus, who is 83 and has been studying corporal punishment since 1969, found that kids who were physically punished had up to a five-point lower IQ score than kids who weren't — the more children were spanked, the lower their IQ — and that the effect could be seen not only in individual children, but across entire nations. Among 32 countries Straus studied, in those where spanking was accepted, the average IQ of the survey population was lower than in nations where spanking was rare, the researcher says.

　　上周五在圣地亚哥举行的主题为“暴力，虐待与创伤”的国际会议上，来自于新罕布什尔州立大学的社会学家默里? 斯特劳斯发表了一篇论文，他指出，体罚确实对孩子造成了长远的影响，其后果是智商的降低。现已83岁高龄的斯特劳斯，从1969年起就开始研究体罚的问题。他发现受过体罚的小孩和没有受过体罚的小孩相比，IQ值（智商得分）要低5个点之多。受体罚越多，IQ值越低。不仅对某个孩子来说是这样，对整个国家来说也是这样。斯特劳斯说，在他研究的32个国家里面，那些普遍认可体罚行为的国家，人们的IQ值要低于那些极少存在体罚行为的国家。