History Lesson

"Mr. Westman, why do women become ineligible for corporal punishment at the age of forty?" asked Louis Brown, a high school senior at Duke Ford HS.

"That is an excellent question, Louis," praised Mr. Westman. "The answer to that question is slightly complicated. It's true that both women and men have full frontal lobe capacity by the age of 25. There is more to the story of the brain than that fact, however. Many years ago, some scientists began to experiment with different ways to motivate people to perform their duties to a high level. Various methods were tested, but one method worked exceedingly well with women. This was corporal punishment. Interestingly, it did not seem to have the same impact with tested with male subjects."

"The studies consisted of a variety of ages of women, from eighteen all the way to sixty-five. There were not enough participants at every age though. The distribution was uneven. The vast majority of women were under the age of forty. In the end of the researchers ended up being only able to conclude that women from the ages of eighteen to forty benefited from consistent corporal punishment."

"Further studies did not expand this age range to older subjects, but instead tested how other punishments impact a woman's performance. Sexual or humiliating punishments were found to be almost as effective as corporal punishment, with the accepted order of effectiveness being corporal punishment, humiliation, and sexual punishment. These studies also hypothesized that the reason behind women's response to these punishments was some sort of immaturity that was undetectable by current technological devices."

"Anyways, to get back on track, why are women over forty ineligible for corporal punishment? Because we haven't done enough research to justify extending it to them. This might change in the future, however, as the government has begun testing on some women between the ages of forty and fifty. The results will probably not be made public for a few years at least, though, due to governmental bureaucracy."

Many of the students had spaced out by the time Mr. Westman had finished his answer, even Louis who had initially asked the question. Seeing that his students were bored of his yammering, Mr. Westman laughed and looked at the clock, "Alright, class is over. You guys can head out."