Anthony Cody writes that corporal punishment is legal in 19 states. Children may be spanked, beaten, or whipped, with–and sometimes without–parental consent. The children likeliest to suffer from these practices are disproportionately African-American and students with disabilities.
There have been efforts at the federal level to ban corporal punishment but thus far none has succeeded. Even the American Assiciation of School Administrators and the National School Boards Association has opposed a federal ban, on grounds of federal intrusion into state matters. Another bill is pending, and Anthony urges all child advocates to get behind it and end the use of force against children in school.
As a parent and grandparent, I would not permit anyone to hit my children. When the adults know their job and are well trained, they do not need to resort to force. No one should be given state permission to whip or paddle or beat children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree. But there are still parents who encourage, even demand, schools beat their own children. The parents do it themselves.
I think its assault.
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Please all in LA…attend this meeting. It is what we should be doing for students rather then corporal punishment. Taking away arts education in public schools is a great punishment.
November 5, 2015 at 1:07 am
This Friday
Sacramento, CA – Senator Ben Allen (D – Santa Monica), chair of the state legislature’s Joint Committee on the Arts, will convene an oversight hearing to examine the state of arts education in California schools on Friday, November 6, 2015. Current state law requires all schools to provide arts education to students, but many schools are not doing so. The lack of arts education is particularly prevalent in disadvantaged communities. The hearing will delve into why there is a high rate of noncompliance with the arts education mandate, and what steps can be taken to compel more schools to incorporate visual and performing arts into the standard curriculum. The hearing can be watched live online at https://youtu.be/4HO-_-DF4JY. – See more at: http://sd26.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-11-04-senate-committee-examine-schools-widespread-noncompliance-arts-education-requirement#sthash.SLWtggls.dpuf
http://sd26.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-11-04-senate-committee-examine-schools-widespread-noncompliance-arts-education-requirement
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It is odd that at the federal level we are allowed to hit children for infractions of school rules whereas in the prison system, the same exact punishment would be considered humiliation and/or assault. I’m sure some of these people would like us to beat prisoners too, but that’s besides the point.
It’s inhumane to treat people who broke democratically prescribed laws this way, it is definitely inhumane to treat little people who don’t always know cause and effect, don’t know the rules, the rules are created by individuals, and punishments are doled out by individuals.
This has no place in our schools and protecting human rights is the domain of the federal government (though that does bring us into the squishy area of education being human rights and how much the government should intrude to fix that).
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“It is odd that at the federal level we are allowed to hit children for infractions of school rules whereas in the prison system, the same exact punishment would be considered humiliation and/or assault.”
Reminds me of this quote:
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
(Nelson Mandela)
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Unfortunately, the people most negatively affected by punitive policies, whether corporal punishment or “no excuses” or whatever, are the ones most supportive of such policies.
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I was never hit in school but I was infrequently (physically) punished as a child (not in any extreme way- almost everyone I knew was too) and I just think it’s either completely ineffective or counter-productive. Even at 7 years old all it made me think was the adult was not in control but out of control. I had a really strong willed (but great!) sibling and it always made her behavior worse. Always. Why do people think it works at all, let alone is a good idea?
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As it is, teachers are walking on eggshells and have to mind every syllable that comes out of their mouths not to mention even a hint of a possibility of a chance of physical contact. Teachers must monitor and be aware of what they say and do every nanosecond of the time they are in the presence of children. Even in the states that allow corporal punishment, you could still be sued if you injured a child. It’s insane to allow corporal punishment, it just opens the school to law suits, bitterness and acrimony. All that being said, I remember one teaching associate of mine who had to use force to break up a fight between a boy and a girl; the boy happened to be the aggressor and was getting the “better” of the girl. The parents of the boy were outraged and complained to the principal and the superintendent. So what was the teacher to do, allow the boy to seriously injure the girl? He had to use force to separate the two and stop the fight; the teacher did not use undo force but just what was necessary to stop the fight and still he was criticized.
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“The parents of the boy were outraged and complained to the principal and the superintendent. ”
I agree that that’s part of it, here anyway. We also have a group who want much more draconian punishment. People just have wildly divergent opinions on what public schools “should” be doing and it (obviously) comes out of the fact that people have wildly different ways of raising children. It is CONSTANT push/pull and I imagine teachers really are in the middle, along with kids, of course.
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I wonder how many and how often schools in these 19 states actually practice corporal punishment. If it’s even moderately prevalent, it must be focused on the youngest children. Otherwise I feel like I would have seen at least one cell-phone video of it by now.
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I believe the CP would be administered in the office of whichever principal is designated for that duty. So, no recording by random witnesses.
I also believe that CP is practiced with some regularity in southern states, although schools have implemented “opt-out” measures that offer suspensions instead of *paddlings* (the term you most often hear for the practice).
I was appalled a few years back to learn this was still going on in the US. It’s been banned in NYS for years.
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My father wielded that belt like it was his job. I am the eldest of six and every indiscretion perpetrated by the other five was my fault. They had to learn it somewhere. Over time, I have come to the realization that my father felt I was a spirited pony, a creature that needed to be broken in order to maintain order in that cacophonous household. The real truth of the matter is that his violence towards me was his inability to control himself. Nothing more.
We, as educators, must denounce this use of violence against our students. We have been given the tools necessary to maintain control of our students and the rooms we occupy with them. If we have to impose our will in a threatening way, we are not performing the job correctly.
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SIC is all I can say … and also very sad.
Everytime I read about this kind of student abuse in schools, I shudder to think of our future as a nation.
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And, there is a strong correlation between states where CP is most frequently practiced and the low-performance of their schools.
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From Jeb Bush’s “Profiles in Character.”
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Thanks a lot for sharing this excerpt. GOD BLESS YOU!!!
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WHAT…I’m shocked. I didn’t know it was legal any where!
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Thankfully the Walton County School District in Florida BANNED corporal punishment in 2014.,,,Floridians Against Corporal Punishment in public School.
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This very real modern American Tragedy (allowing corporal punishment in federally funded public schools) is still playing itself out in the mostly southern US schools, and it is going on every single school day. How do we deal or reason with those that believe in and practice their traditions and culture of violence? This has been embedded into their communities for decades and has become accepted as the “norm.” In some schools like Alvarado High School Texas, Webb City Missouri, Suwannee High School Florida, and more, Freedom (from detention) is traded in lieu of Violence (paddling), and sexually developed 16 – 18 year old male and female High School students are offered the “choice” (with parental approval) of having violence used against their bodies and having adults beat them with wooden boards. At Holmes county High School in Florida students are ordered to make the wooden weapons- paddles) to be used on teen age Senior high school students. These educators (and I use the term loosely) many of who have degrees in education, choose to deliberately ignore the research and evidence against this harm. While our 1 1/2 year old Florida campaign has made some progress in our state (4 school districts have banned the practice within the last year), there are so many other school districts that will continue this abuse unless they are stopped by either a state or federal law prohibiting it. We have endlessly contacted many including state legislators, the Committee of education and workforce in D.C.,other members of Congress, Obama himself, and of course school after school where these assaults are taking place. Despite the best efforts of so many other activists all across America-there is no end in sight even with the current fourth attempt (bill) proposed at ending this. Regardless of whether it is an almost 40 year old court ruling to blame or parents themselves by permitting this brutality, This remains today as the Disgrace of America’s public learning institutions in the 21st century.,,, J. C. McNulty ,,,,’Floridians Against Corporal Punishment in Public Schools.’
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And the media turns a blind eye to this, which is real abuse, while giving Campbell Brown et. al. tons of coverage to their made-up hysteria over sexual predators in the classroom.
Thank you for the advocacy you are doing, Floridians Against Corporal Punishment. You are on the side of the angels.
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Although I strongly think it is wrong for any schools to use public shaming and physical punishment like beating a kid with a hickory stick, I refuse to support another federal law that controls behavior just because one politically correct faction doesn’t like that behavior.
We have too much of that already and what have we gotten for it: a militarized police force turning the U.S. into a police state, and the largest prison popularity in the world with China running a distant second when we look at the ratio based on each 100,000 people.
In fact, in some states, pregnant women can end up in prison for just taking an over-the -counter pain killer, and, in another for instance, from legislation supported by politically correct California tree lovers, we have several really old 80-foot high oak trees around our house protected by legislation that if we have trimmed or cut down without permission from the city, we can end up in court and then in prison for years with massive fines mounting into tens of thousands of dollars even if one of those massive oak trees presented a danger that it might fall and hit the house with us in it crushing both the house and us.
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Valerie Strauss on this topic with some statistics:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/18/19-states-still-allow-corporal-punishment-in-school
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