As a math teacher in a Houston, Texas, junior high in 1980, Jimmy Dunne occasionally used a paddle to discipline his students. If a boy became unruly and disruptive (it was almost always a boy) Dunne would take him out into the hallway or the men's room, find another teacher to witness, and apply three whacks to the student's rear with a small wooden paddle. It was common practice.

But after a while, Dunne's conscience got the better of him. "I started to think, most of us aren't doing this at home," Dunne says, "so why are we doing it in schools?" Dunne is now an outspoken opponent of corporal punishment in schools.

When it comes to attitudes about paddling, Linda Belcher is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Belcher, vice principal of Mount Washington Elementary School in Kentucky, wants to reintroduce corporal punishment in her school (it was banned 10 years ago). She says that an increase in the number of detention assignments and other disciplinary actions at her school have spurred her to look to the past for an answer.

Belcher received permission from the Bullitt County Board of Education to research the practice and survey parents, teachers and students. If Belcher goes forward with a request to reinstate corporal punishment, Mount Washington may become one of a handful of district schools to win a waiver from the school board to paddle students. "It would be an option, a last resort, another tool," Belcher says.

Paddling Still Practiced
Belcher and Dunne stand on two sides of a cultural divide in U.S. schools, where the once-common practice of physical discipline has been in steep decline—but is still allowed in 23 states, including Texas and Kentucky. The most recent data shows that over 365,000 children were struck in public schools in 1998. (The National Center to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools offers a map [1]. Scroll down to "U.S. States Banning Corporal Punishment.")

In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that corporal punishment in schools is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. While 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws prohibiting the practice, efforts to do the same in the remaining 23 states have failed to gain ground.

Dunne says Texas legislators don't want to be the ones making the decision to bar corporal punishment. "Legislators want to leave it up to local districts to make decisions," Dunne says. "To me they're just passing the buck."

Dunne became an activist on the issue after witnessing a particularly brutal paddling of an 11-year-old student by another teacher. He complained to the principal, and then to the school board. In 1981, he founded the Houston-based People Opposed to Paddling Students, an organization that works to end corporal punishment in schools through public awareness activities.

Proponents of paddling, like Belcher, feel that school discipline problems have grown to the point where educators cannot afford to give up the option of using corporal punishment.

But opponents say that it has long-term negative effects on children, and that physical punishment tends to be meted out to some types of children more readily than to others. According to the Ohio-based Center for Effective Discipline, poor children, minorities, children with disabilities and boys are more likely to be victims of paddling than others.

According to the National Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools, every industrialized country in the world now prohibits school corporal punishment, except the United States, Canada and one state in Australia. Paddling is most common in southern U.S. states, with Texas accounting for one-fourth of all student paddlings each year. In Mississippi, one out of every 10 children is struck with a paddle by a teacher.

The state of Kentucky allows the use of corporal punishment in schools, but according to the Kentucky School Board Association, about half the school districts in the state prohibit it.

Belcher says if she does obtain a waiver allowing corporal punishment in her school, it will be used carefully, and that individual parents will have the option of withholding permission for its use on their children. "We're trying to work with parents so that they are comfortable and trust us to do it the way we should," Belcher says.

Effectiveness Questioned
Morris Risner, executive director of student relations and school safety for Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, says his district stopped using corporal punishment about 10 years ago because it was not effective. "The amount of discipline problems didn't decrease," Risner says. "We were looking for other ways to give consequences to kids and make them accountable for their behavior."

Terry Smith, superintendent of West Clark Community Schools in Indiana, did his share of paddling when he started teaching back in 1968. But Smith's school district doesn't use corporal punishment, largely because so many teachers, parents and other professionals have negative attitudes towards it. He says we've come a long way since then. "Physical punishment causes a lot of negative consequences," Smith says, "and there are so many more creative ways to discipline."

Some teachers say that punishing kids by restricting them from social activities can be an effective deterrent from bad behavior. Others say that rewarding kids for good behavior is a critical part of the discipline process. Dr. Irwin Hyman of the National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment and Alternatives at Pennsylvania's Temple University says that overall, educators should be taught more discipline theory during training.

"The less educators know about discipline theory, the more they spank kids," Hyman says.

Hyman says that little research is currently being done on corporal punishment in schools because there is a general consensus that it doesn't work.

"I don't think there are serious researchers who think it's a good idea to do it in schools," Hyman says.

According to studies in the early 1990s, children who are spanked frequently and severely demonstrate a higher rate of aggression against siblings and people outside of the family and exhibit a higher rate of hitting spouses as adults. Even a few instances of being hit as children are associated with more depressive symptoms in adults.

"The problem is not spanking in schools, the problem is that we as a society have such faith in this kind of punishment to change children's behavior," Hyman says. "Until we can convince parents that spanking is a bad idea, it's going to be difficult to convince school boards."

Law Proposed to Protect Teachers
Legislation included in President Bush's education proposal would protect educators who use corporal punishment from lawsuits stemming from their actions. According to anti-spanking advocates, the Teacher Liability Protection Act (S. 316) would immunize negligent teachers, principals and administrators when their misconduct injures students. The legislation's supporters say that it is necessary because of frivolous lawsuits against educators on discipline issues.

Jordan Riak, executive director of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education, says that the bill purports to be correcting a problem that doesn't exist. "Teachers are powerfully protected already, and even the ones who are demonstrably dangerous manage to keep their jobs," Riak says.

Both the American Association of Trial Lawyers and the Center for Justice and Democracy oppose the legislation.

Riak says that in the United States, public awareness about the dangers of corporal punishment (both at home and at school) is rapidly increasing. The number of parents and teachers who use it is decreasing just as quickly.

"No one has been able to show any positive benefits of corporal punishment," Riak says. "When you talk to paddlers and spankers, all they have to show you is anecdotal evidence."

References:

• The Center for Effective Discipline [2] offers information on corporal punishment in schools.
• Project NoSpank [3] is a resource for adults who believe that children's optimal development occurs in nurturing, violence-free environments.
• The Conflict Resolution Education Network (CREnet) is committed to creating safe schools and civil communities by making conflict resolution education universally available. The American Academy of Pediatrics offers their position on physical punishment [4].