schools. It is also written in the Bible, Proverbs 13:24. "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." Corporal punishment was widespread in all of these civilizations. The expression "Spare the rod and spoil the child" derives from the Bible, Proverbs, 13:24, and was adapted by Samuel Butler in the satirical poem Hudibras. Germany In the 18th century common notions of the evil nature of children or of taming bear witness to superstitions and the wish to be able to train human beings like animals. One German child-raising book in the 18th century said: "These first years have, among other things, the advantage that one can use force and compulsion. With age children forget everything they encountered in their early childhood. Thus if one can take away children's will, they will not remember afterward that they had had a will." In Germany the parental right to discipline was abolished by a change in the law in 2000. The Federal Minister for Family Affairs from 1994 to 1998 Claudia Nolte had wanted to maintain parents' right to use mild spanking, contrary to the views of Alice Miller in her 1980 book For Your Own Good. Miller has written: "I understand 'black pedagogy' to be a parenting approach that is directed toward breaking the will of the child, in order to make it an obedient subject, with the aid of open or concealed use of force, manipulation, and repression." Psychological background A relevant criterion in defining poisonous pedagogy is if a manipulative approach reveals behavioural issues in the parent such as a blindness to feelings, cruelty, or a tendency toward violence, or if strong negative emotions such as anger or hate are being discharged, emotions against which the juvenile or infant psyche, with its age-based limitations, cannot defend itself. Miller also came to the conclusion, as a result of her therapeutic work, that she needed to "work on" her own childhood in order to understand her clients better. She takes the view that "poisonous pedagogy" is a behavior that is passed on from generation to generation by being euphemized and sanitized. Other themes of the controversial author Katharina Rutschky are parenting, feminist criticism, and abuse. Personalities Influential advocates of various forms of corporal punishment include John Harvey Kellogg, Moritz Schreber, and others. Discussion and criticism Alice Miller defines poisonous pedagogy as all types of