Writing from Everman (TX, US) Rick Lyman reported about the use of corporal punishment in schools. Mr. Lyman, who is a reporter for the New York Times (NY, US), described places where the practice of paddling students continues.
In a handful of districts, like the one here in Everman, there have been recent moves to reinstate it, some successful, more not. In Delaware, a bill to rescind that state?s ban on paddling never got through the legislature. But in Pike County, Ohio, corporal punishment was reinstated last year. And in southeast Mississippi, the Laurel school board voted in August to reinstate a corporal punishment policy, passing one that bars men from paddling women, but does not require parental consent, as many other policies do.
The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.
Mr. Lyman describes different viewpoints on the use of corporal punishment, including the opinions by evangelicals advocating it and the evidence offered by others (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics) against it. Based almost certainly on anecdotal evidence, some believe “it works,” meaning students no longer misbehave, I guess.
Whether corporal punishment deters misbehavior would an easy question to examine. In studying it, I’d also like to examine the other punitive methods of behavior management. And, quite importantly, I’d like to know what sorts of positive behavior management strategies are employed. In 1993-94, Jim Kauffman and a group of colleagues drafted a document addressing violence among children and how educators might address it; one of the recommendations was to eschew violence as a means of discipline. I’m still in agreement with that view.
Link to Mr. Lyman’s story (free subscription required). Link to the AAP policy statement on “Corporal Punishment in the schools.” Link to the violence statement by Porfessor Kauffman and others.
In the early 1980’s, when the Einstein School was still new and operating out of a Church basement on Thomson Road near the University of Virginia, the school at the time worked primarily with students that had Learning Disabilities. Having constant difficulties with one student the schools founder, who was also at the time the main instructor, asked for and received permission to use “corporal punishment” from the student’s parents. The student’s father was employed at the time by the University.
It is possible that the student may have had emotional disturbances, although since I am not a professional and am relating only what I observed I cannot say I know that as fact. The student was subject to frequent rages that would start almost from nothing- from the smallest incidents. It would begin when the student started to “act out” inappropriately with the instructor or another student, talking back… etc, (which would often devolve to yelling back at the instructor). The student was given three warnings, the third of which would result in the paddling (the paddle was wood and to me resembled a small cutting board with a handle, as might be used in a kitchen).
I remember one time the student, trying to resist, attempted to run. But where does one really run? I will never forget the sight of the school’s founder dragging the student by one ankle across the smooth basement floor into one of the unused rooms to administer the spanking. Nor will I forget the angry expression on his face and the sounds that came from the room as the punishment was administered.
Looking back now, I have to wonder if that student received worse punishment at home (I think yes), and wonder now if that wasn’t the source of this student’s frequent rages in class.
I left the school some time after that incident and lost touch with that student.
I have to wonder today what good resulted from any of it? I myself cannot think of any.
I work in a school as a teacher in a major city school district in California. Although I agree that corporal punishment can be abused and should be a method of last resort, I will tell you from several years of experience the end results of banning corporal punishment and the ridiculously lenient discipline policies it creates:
–At some schools students are sent to the “guidance room”, a joke detention center where some students like to go because they get to get out of class and be with their friends. At one school the guidance room is so small they normally cannot accomodate all the students sent out in a period, so they have them sit with their friends outside on benches in a grassy area. Those who are in the room are made to do standards. Those who are not are not made to do this simply because they are outside. No follow-up disciplines occur for these students, except that it gets included in their record.
–Standards themselves are considered by some administrators to be a form of corporal punishment. Because of their lack of critical thinking I am not the greatest fan of standards myself, but on rare occasions I have employed it and feel it is idiotic to refer to it as corporal punishment.
–Rigorous campus clean-up programs exist at almost no schools. Some schools have deans that do it on an individual basis, but over the course of nearly seven years of education, mostly in substitute teaching (which, contrary to popular belief about experience, actually gives you more experience by exposing you to a wider set of varying school atmospheres and procedures), I saw only one school in which campus clean-up was an option teachers could check off to request. Somebody somewhere along the line would undoubtedly come to believe this was corporal punishment and should be banned.
–Exercise as corporal punishment is banned. Sure, we have kids that are obese in unacceptable numbers, and we do not as a state in California want to employ punishment and tears the body down, but do we use a punishment that would build the body up? Of course not! The typical response of those who oppose this method of punishment is that it is not related to the offense. This may be true for students in elementary grades and so may not be good there. But for heaven’s sake, if the private school I was at in 7th grade had done this I sure as heck would have known what I was running laps for. The proper method of doing this is at the beginning of the year give parents the option to refuse this method based on a documented medical reason (children refused can do campus clean-up), and have teachers consult with the P.E. coaches to have it administered during P.E.
–Except for self-defense or to break up fights, a teacher cannot touch a student. This sounds sensible at first, but includes the following extreme example. In one case of substitute teaching at a middle school I was dealing with an unruly kid who refused to do what I asked so I said for him to stay after for detention. He was going to leave when I took three fingers and tried to gently hold him by his jacket collar. This hold was not a grab but a gentle tug. He reacted almost violently in squirming his way out, and unbeknownst to me at the time his father was on campus. A minute later his father came in raging mad, screaming “Did you touch my son???!!!” and physically assaulting me. I was then questioned by a police officer and summoned before the assistant principal, who in bizarre fashion told me what I had done was against federal regulations. I was made to apologize to the kid before the father and the assistant principal, an apology which was NOT sincere but in which I had to fake it completely, giving the student a lesson that if he ever has a problem with a teacher in class, daddy will come along and assault the teacher.
–There is a general atmosphere where rules are allowed to be violated and are not strictly enforced, and where they are strictly enforced the students rebel anyway. Take a case that may not warrant corporal punishment but is an obvious example: tucking in shirts. Students should do this at home, not come to school looking like slobs. For months this year I have told students every day to tuck in their shirts at home, but has this changed the behavior? Have they complied with school policy? A few tuck in their shirts at the moment they see me looking at them, but none do it at home. I did in every day for 12 years in private schools, but they somehow cannot do it for a single day.
–More serious but common infractions occur such as swearing in the classroom. For this years ago I created an essay assignment where students copy a list of reasons not to swear, and in the end give a promise to refrain in the future. This was rejected for use at one school. I later learned why. During standardized testing they had all seniors who had taken the test gather in the auditorium to watch a foul-language filled movie. I learned exactly how it sounds when the F-word is blared on the auditorium loudspeakers. But that wasn’t as bad as the blood and blowing away of people in the violence of the film, or the two men kissing scene shown in another film at a charter school I was at some time later. That scene was shown in a church used temporarily by the school while the school was being renovated.
OK, so I have gone beyond the subject of corporal punishment and into the general lawlessness that exists in schools in California. The two may not be directly related, but they often go hand in hand. I doubt that in many schools where corporal punishment is allowed will you find those same administrators exposing children to films where the f-word is blared on the school speakers, or where women sitting naked in a bathtub are blown away by a criminal with a shotgun so that their blood splatters on the walls. These administrators take their jobs of discipling more seriously.
Like any form of punishment corporal punishment can be abused. It has its times for being proper and improper, and can lose its effectiveness if used too often.
Last night I was arguing with a teacher friend of mine who is mysteriously blind to the fact that corporal punishment still is on the books in 22 states. He argued that even so it wasn’t being used (over 300,000 cases in a year and it is not being used??) because of fear of being sued. His argument was that we should just go along with the trend of fear of lawsuits. I say we should stand up to that, that through changes in the law the damage that has been done can be undone. Corporal punishment, given by administrators (not teachers, who may use it in anger), and including alternative options like campus clean-up and exercise, is a viable option. Let’s leave the zoos to the animals and have our schools become schools again!
c.p has taken my sacrum, coccyx and has disintergrated all my disks im 35 use cane on good days and since alldisks are fissured no surgery so im on opiates for life and disabled for life. Union public schools, tulsa okla. from k-8&11thgrade ive recieved a staggering conservatively 4500 “swats” I had adhd and bipolar before it was even knon kids could have bipolar ritla exacerbates bipolar and add in k-3rd 1977-1981 was called front lobe retardation then a yr. later was known as ads att. defitiancy. sydrome then audio memeory deficit then add. I couldnt help my condition and was made a poster boy for union expeirament I saw phycomitrists psychiatrist phychologist speech pathologist all concluding i dont pay attention but is a genius @1st grade i tested @ 6-7 reading &comp. 4 grade math. Im now disabled in a wheelchair, with a 173 i.q. Staford-benet. That was the sick dichotomy I WAS BRILLIANTE BUT COULDNT USE IT UNLESS THE TEACHER WAS TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING i ENJOYED WHICH i VE FOUND IS PARAMOUNT IN ADD WHAT THEY WILL START & FINISH PUT EVRYTHING BEHIND THAT/THEM,(E.G.) GUITAR, FOOTBALL IF THEY LIKE IT AND WIL STICK W/ IT PUT ALL YOUR TIME BEHIND THAT CHILD AND BE HIS BEST FRIEND DONT OVER PERFORMB/C ADHD KIDS DONT LISTEN TO WHAT THEY DONT UNDERSTAND OR LIKE. tHEIR HEARING IS VERYMUCH LIKE NIGHT DRIVING MIXED WITH THE “BORING TEACHER’S VOICE” sOUNDS LIKE CHARLIE BROWN’S TEACHER MUFFLED IF NOT THE KID NOT HEARING ANYTHING. dAYDREAMING IS 40% AT LEAST OF A ADD /BIPOLAR CHILD.
THATS THE BIG DIBACLE iM MAD ABOUT TEACHERS ARE SO QUICK TO THROW ADERRALL IN KIDS THAT ARE HAVING RAPID MOODSWINGS THIS ENHACES BIPOLAR WHICH IS DEVISTATING IN ADULT LIFE. TREAT ADD 1ST NO BIPOLAR FIRST THESE KIDS SHOULD BE ON NONADDICTIVE PILLS LIKE NEUROTIN/GABATRIL/VALPROIC ACID SEROQUEL NOT AMPHETAMINS THEY JUST SNIFF AND SELL THEMTO NORMAL KIDS AND INTRO DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR EARLY ON. i HOPE i HELPED. aLL i HEARD MY WHOLE LIFE WAS WHY ARE YOU WASTING YOUR SMARTS AND ACTING LIKE A MONSTER? ME:i DONT KNOW HOW DO YOU WHEN THATS YOUR CHEMICAL IMBALANCED? IS 1ST GRADER SUPPOSD TO SAY OH M SEROTONIN IS LITTLE LOW AND I COULD USE A RIT 4 MY DOPAMINE. ITS ITWAS JUST CRASS. MY WHOLE LIFE. WELLALL
I LEARNED THAT SWATS DESTRY YOUR KIDS BACK AND TEACH THEM TO ABUSE ANIMALS AND PPL. AND i THINK THE WHOLE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT THING IS SADISTIC AND HAS CAUSED A BIG JUMP INTO MASOCHISM. THE CONCEPTS KINKY.