Preparing amendments to the law on the protection of children, Estonian civil servants have engaged in hot-tempered controversy with each other on the eternal question of the physical punishment of children.

They want to prohibit flogging officially on a legislative level. Bureaucrats consider this amendment to be their primary concern, while skeptics from the Estonian Ministry of Education find the idea of the state interfering with family life rather strange.

The Minister of Education Tõnis Lukas said there is no need to prohibit certain things which are already illicit by a so-called “social contract” that must operate in modern society, he told Postimees web media.

“Otherwise we would have to specially precondition in the law that children cannot beat their parents,” said the minister.