Paddling makes a comeback in Missouri
A Missouri school district’s announcement that it is bringing back paddling drew a lot of attention and dismay this past week. But corporal punishment — with an interruption, perhaps, for the coronavirus pandemic in some places — never went away in a large number of schools.
The practice remains legal in 19 states, mostly in the South, despite efforts to abolish it.
Although the numbers have declined in the past decade, about 70,000 public schoolchildren were subjected to corporal punishment in the 2017-18 school year, the most recent year for which federal data is available. Nearly 4,000 schools reported using corporal punishment during that school year.
“It’s just a really, really disturbing practice that some districts just continue to hang onto,” said Morgan Craven, national director for policy, advocacy and community engagement at the Intercultural Development Research Association, which supports a federal ban on corporal punishment in schools.
The practice, defined as paddling, spanking or other forms of physical discipline, jumped back into the news this past week with the announcement that the school district in Cassville, a small city in southwestern Missouri, had reinstated paddling, a practice it abandoned in 2001, according to the Springfield News-Leader.
Corporal punishment will be used only with a parent’s permission and “only when all other alternative means of discipline have failed, and then only in reasonable form and upon the recommendation of the principal,” the district’s policy states. It was put in place in response to requests from parents, Superintendent Merlyn Johnson told the News-Leader.
“We’ve had people actually thank us for it,” he told the newspaper. “Surprisingly, those on social media would probably be appalled to hear us say these things, but the majority of people that I’ve run into have been supportive.”
Johnson did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The practice remains legal because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that is more than 40 years old. In 1977, the court ruled in Ingraham v. Wright that corporal punishment in public schools was constitutional, which meant that each state could make its own rules about physically disciplining students.
If one adult were to paddle another with a wooden board, it would be considered assault, said Elizabeth T. Gershoff, a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
“But when the teacher hits a smaller person who happens to be a child, these states and these schools are saying it’s OK,” she said. “It’s showing we give children less protection against violence than we give adults.”
Groups such as the American Psychological Association, which has opposed corporal punishment in schools since 1975, have long argued that paddling can cause injury and trauma and is not effective at improving behavior.
To the contrary, children become more aggressive and disruptive the more frequently they are subjected to physical punishment, according to the association.
Critics have also cited research showing that Black students and students with disabilities are more likely to be paddled in school than their peers.
Although they constitute 15 percent of public school students in the United States, Black students make up 37 percent of the students subjected to school corporal punishment, according to the association. Children with disabilities make up 21 percent of all instances of corporal punishment, even though they are 17 percent of the student population.