"To beat or not to beat?" - The last book of the outstanding Russian social scientist Igor Semenovich Kon, written shortly before his death. In this book, based on numerous international and domestic anthropological, sociological, historical, psychological, educational, and other sexological research, the author tries to give an overview of corporal punishment of children as a social and cultural phenomenon. What is their social and pedagogical meaning, how effective they are and why all of a sudden these venerable millennial practice fell out of fashion? Or just seems to come out? The purpose of this book - to help readers, especially teachers and parents, meaningful, and not dogmatic form his own stance on these difficult issues. Igor S. Kon was born on May 21, 1928 in Leningrad. He graduated from the the Faculty of History of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute named after A.I. Herzen (1947) and two post-graduate at the new history and philosophy (1950). Ph.D. in History (1950), PhD (1950), Doctor of Philosophy (1960), Professor (1963), Academician of the Russian Academy of Education (1989), Honorary Professor of Cornell University (1989), Doctor honoris causa University of Surrey (1992) . Areas of scientific interest - the philosophy and methodology of history, the history of sociology (the founder and first president of the Research Committee on the History of Sociology, Sociological Association of the World), ethics, social and age psychology, theory of personality, anthropology and sociology of childhood and adolescence, sexology. The author of over 40 books and 300 articles, many of which have been translated into foreign languages.
