Many people, even within the USA, think corporal punishment has long disappeared from all American public schools. This is not so.
The US Supreme Court decided in 1977 that spanking or paddling by schools is lawful where it has not been explicitly outlawed by local authorities. It is true that the incidence of CP has declined sharply in recent years, but only 31 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico) have actually abolished it in public schools, either de facto or de jure. CP is still used in the other 19 states, and it remains a fairly common practice in three of them, all in the South: Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.
It is also routine, but only in a minority of (often rural or small-town) schools, in five more southern states: Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
The latest states to abolish were Delaware, in 2003, after an eight-year gap in which no abolitions took place at state level; Pennsylvania, in 2005; Ohio, in 2009; and now in 2011 New Mexico. The number of paddlings had already fallen to a low level in these states.
On the other hand, efforts to ban school CP by legislation have failed in 2003 in Wyoming and repeatedly in Missouri, and also in North Carolina in 2007, Louisiana in 2009 and Texas in 2011.
Legislative attempts to reintroduce CP in California (1996), Montana (1997), Iowa (1998) and, more ambiguously, Oregon (1999) were fairly easily defeated. So too was a 2007 bill to make it easier to spank students in Kansas.
A US Supreme Court ruling in 1975 (Baker vs Owen) held that schools could spank students against the wishes of their parents, subject to various criteria being met.
But in 2011, laws were introduced in both Texas and North Carolina giving parents the right to exempt their students from any CP provisions. This codifies what in many areas was already the practice, formally or informally. However, the new Texas rule applies only to large urban areas, those school districts with a population under 50,000 (of which there are hundreds) being exempted. Since most large urban school districts had already abolished CP, and since many other districts already allowed parents to opt out, this new Texas legislation may not make a great deal of difference on the ground.
This map appeared in the New York Times on 30 September 2006 (read the whole article here). It shows Utah as still allowing CP, but with an incidence of zero. In fact it has been banned there not by legislation but by regulation. (Since the map was published, paddling has also been outlawed in Ohio and New Mexico.)
Note that all the above refers only to public schools. CP in private schools is outlawed in only two states: Iowa and New Jersey.
Statistics. According to estimates from the federal Department of Education (Office of Civil Rights), there were about 223,000 paddlings of students in the 2005-06 school year -- down from 457,754 only ten years previously. This shows that the rapid decline of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which had leveled off by the middle of the 1990s, had resumed. Total paddlings were equivalent to only 0.5% of the total US school population.
In percentage terms the heaviest-paddling states in 2005-06 were still Mississippi (7.5 per cent of students paddled during the year) followed by Arkansas (4.7%). Alabama comes third with 4.5% -- also in slow decline, despite that state's 1995 explicit legislative encouragement to teachers to use the paddle.
In absolute terms, however, Texas, with its much greater population, is the "world capital of paddling": 49,197 punishments recorded, but this is down from 118,701 only ten years previously, a remarkably sharp drop, completely discrediting various anecdotal suggestions that many Texas school districts had become more enthusiastic about spanking in recent years, rather than less. This figure amounts to only 1.1% of Texas students paddled during the year but, simply because Texas is so big, it represents about one-fifth of total US CP. At the other extreme, the number of officially recorded paddlings in Idaho was 111, in Kansas 50, in Colorado 8, and in Wyoming zero.
According to one report, paddlings in Mississippi actually increased between 2006-07 and 2008-09, from 47,727 to 57,953, a very remarkable bucking of the trend if it is true. These statistics are cited to the state's Department of Education and do not seem to tally with those collected by the federal authorities, which quote lower numbers.
All the federal Dept of Education figures, however, should be treated as approximate: they are extrapolated from only a sample of the figures for each state, and therefore suffer from what statisticians call "spurious accuracy". Furthermore, some observers think that all such statistics understate the real number of CP incidences, citing anecdotal evidence suggesting that some, maybe many, punishments are not properly recorded. On this view, the apparent increase in CP in Mississippi might simply reflect an improved standard of record-keeping.
Paddling statistics in some North Carolina districts were already in sharp decline before the 2011 restrictions came into effect, according to this July 2011 news report.
Modus operandi. Corporal punishment in US schools is almost invariably applied with a wooden paddle to the student's clothed posterior. A typical punishment nowadays consists of two or three strokes, typically referred to as "swats" or "licks" or occasionally "pops". In American English the procedure is often described as "spanking", even though an implement is used.
In the past it was the norm in some schools to require the culprit to present his bottom for punishment by standing clear of any furniture and bending down as low as possible, often with feet placed well apart for stability: "Grab your ankles" was a familiar command. This had the advantage of being safe, in that it made it fairly difficult for the paddle to land anywhere other than in the right place; but it now seems to be regarded in some quarters as unacceptably demeaning, perhaps because it obliges the student actively to assume a symbolically subservient posture, or perhaps just because it makes the protruding buttocks so prominent. Even the "hands on knees" position, rather less undignified, is perhaps less favored than it once was. Nowadays it is more usual for the offender to be asked to bend over a desk or chair (pictured right) or, maybe more often still, merely to put his hands on the desk, leaning forward only a few degrees from the vertical (pictured below) even though, and particularly with today's fashion for loose clothing, this is clearly less effective in terms of pulling the fabric taut across the student's seat. "Hands on the wall" is another possible method, as illustrated in this 1970s photograph and this recent video clip.
Where and by whom. Until recent years, CP was often administered in the classroom, or in the hallway just outside it. It was also an American tradition for sports coaches to do a lot of on-the-spot paddling, typically in the locker-room or even out on the field. While all those things may still happen in a few places, it is much more common now for the punishment to be delivered privately in an office, often by the principal or deputy principal or at least in his or her presence. It is less likely nowadays to be done on the spur of the moment, and more likely to require formal bureaucratic procedures and specific documentation. This affords greater legal certainty, and also helps guard against the danger of angry teachers resorting to random violence.
Who gets paddled. Female as well as male students may receive CP. This is largely a fairly recent phenomenon arising out of modern American notions about sexual equality. For a relatively early mention see this Oct 1952 news item about four teenage girls paddled in Pennsylvania. An example of the trend gathering steam can be found in this 1988 news item from Ohio about high school girls demanding the right to be paddled. They thought it unfair that boys were often given a choice between a spanking and detention or suspension, while girls had no option but to serve the detention. In the years since then, this kind of sex-discrimination seems to have disappeared more or less everywhere, in public schools at least (some private schools still make an explicit distinction between the sexes in this matter).
In practice, however, statistics consistently suggest that around 75% to 85% of paddlings are still of boys. There are no age restrictions: the recipient may be aged anything from 4 through 18. Twelfth-graders, who might have been driving automobiles for three or four years, or having legal sex for two years, can be and are spanked in some districts. Some anecdotal accounts suggest that these senior students, especially if male, can expect to be paddled a lot harder, stroke for stroke, than younger recipients.
The legal position relating to students who have reached the age of majority (18 in most states, but 21 in Mississippi) seems to be a bit of a gray area. Does the school cease at that point to be in loco parentis? Common sense would suggest that it should then be for the student him- or herself to accept or refuse a paddling, without reference to the parents. See this 2005 Texas case and this legal comment on it. Whatever the law, in practice it would seem highly unwise for a school to attempt to paddle an 18-year-old against his or her own wishes.
In general, though, statistics show that the most typical recipients of corporal punishment in the USA are boys aged 13 to 16 -- much as in pretty well all other cultures since the dawn of time.
In some areas in the past, it was made explicit that only boys may be chastised, as in Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1898. This might be regarded nowadays as illegal discrimination, but it reflects past practice in some UK districts and New Zealand, and is still today the rule in Singapore and Malaysia. For more discussion of this issue, see Some questions answered.
Rules and regulations. Many US school districts nowadays lay down more or less detailed rules for the administration of CP and publish them in their school handbooks. (For a very early example, see this May 1950 news item.) These often specify such things as the offenses for which a paddling may be meted out, the maximum number of strokes, the permissible dimensions of the paddle, the part of the body to be targeted, who can administer it and where and in whose presence, what "due process" is required (e.g. formally stating in the presence of the witness what the student is being punished for, and inviting the student to state his or her case), whether prior parental consent is necessary, and what happens if the student refuses to submit to the punishment.
It has become increasingly common, though it is still not universal, for the rules to stipulate that the paddling must be delivered by a staff member of the same sex as the student. This clearly reflects unease in some quarters about the idea of men spanking teenage girls.
A matter of choice. To a much greater extent than in the past, paddling has become in many schools an option for either the student or the parent, or both. Older teens, especially, may be offered a choice between a paddling and, say, detention or ISS. Much anecdotal evidence suggests that, in these circumstances, most students, and certainly most boys, opt to be spanked, preferring the "short sharp shock" of severe physical pain for a relatively brief duration to long, tedious hours of unhealthy incarceration. In effect, students in these places may be seen to have been given "a right to be paddled" as well as "a right not to be paddled".
For a real-life example of this policy being put into practice at a high school in Arkansas, see these video clips.
Some schools explicitly state that no student will receive corporal punishment against his or her own wish. A few even place limits on the number of times per semester that a student may choose a spanking. Many schools offer parents the opportunity to register in writing their desire that their student not be paddled, but they often stress that, in that case, the alternative will be suspension.
Results. The effects of paddling can vary a lot, depending on how forcefully it is applied and also, to a degree, on the student's physical resilience. Paddled students tend to say that it hurts like crazy at the time, but that the pain often does not last very long. There may be yelps and tears and red faces, as attested by numerous anecdotal eyewitness and first-person accounts. But even a hard paddling of four or five "swats" -- probably fairly rare nowadays, at any rate in public schools -- will, if administered accurately, only leave the buttocks sore and, at worst, harmlessly bruised for several days; it does not cause injury or bleeding.
Private schools. Private schools are somewhat less constrained than public ones in matters of punishment. In many cases, part of their appeal to parents is that they can boast much better-behaved pupils than public schools because they are freer to impose strict discipline. This can involve some private schools in frequent applications of CP -- especially, but not only, some Christian schools, who are able to invoke biblical justifications for it. Some boarding schools, too, are noted for making extensive use of the paddle, particularly "historically black" ones or those with a military emphasis.
Note too that there are many states -- including Alaska, California, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Utah and Washington State -- where paddles are deployed in private schools even though they are banned in public ones.
History. Much research remains to be done on the history of corporal punishment in American education. Presumably the early settlers brought their own existing practices with them from Europe. Whipping with a switch is much mentioned in literature in, especially, the 19th century, often making use of branches or twigs collected right outside the schoolroom.
In some districts, such as Alameda in California in 1893, regulations specified the use of a leather strap on the palm of the hand, as in Scotland and Canada, but this does not seem to have been widespread in the USA. However, a strap is also mentioned (no target area specified) in this 1880 case in New York State.
It is far from clear why, how, or exactly when the wooden paddle (originally, it is often alleged, an implement associated with slavery) became almost universally adopted. The paddle has also long been a feature of American college fraternity life -- but which came first? At all events, anecdotal evidence suggests that paddling had become the norm for school CP in most districts by the 1930s if not 1920s.
An early mention of the word "paddle" comes in this 1887 news item about an allegedly excessive school punishment in Iowa. In that case, the implement is described as "a hickory club or 'paddle', three feet long, one-half inch thick and one and one-half inches wide".
A newspaper editorial in 1908 opined that the paddle seemed "almost divinely appointed" for the purpose of punishing a boy, and explained why it was so suited to application to his rear end: "That area of the body which it most aptly fits is not very susceptible to mortal wounds ... the bones which it contains are so abundantly swathed about with muscular tissue that there is no danger of breaking them".
Some commentators have surmised anecdotally that the paddle may have come to be favored over the switch because of its weight and solidity, so that, if used properly, it can be effective even through fairly thick clothing, such as denim jeans with patch pockets over the seat.
In the past, some paddles had holes drilled in them, to reduce air resistance, as in this picture from a fictional film (right). This supposedly increases the effectiveness of the punishment, but is nowadays rare, and explicitly disallowed by some school district regulations, probably because of fears that it could increase the propensity for bruising.
However, there were one or two places where the rattan cane was the official instrument, notably the Boston public schools until the 1960s. Even odder in American terms, the Boston rattan was applied to the student's hand (see J. Kozol, "Death at an Early Age", The Atlantic, September 1967
). Massachusetts abolished school CP in 1972.
Another special case is New Jersey, which abolished school CP in 1867, more than a century before any other state. An attempt to reintroduce it in Newark NJ, with parental consent only, was rejected in 1894. The press coverage implies that the implement used was to have been the rattan, had the legislation passed.
Some big-city school districts, especially in the urban north, abolished CP long before the states in which they are situated. Thus, New York City first banned it in public schools in 1870, while in New York State as a whole it was not discontinued until 1985.
College and university. It is surprising to discover that college students and university freshmen could at one time be paddled in some places. See these 1922 rules for the spanking of students by police at Northwestern University in Chicago, and these Sep 1919 news items about punishments at the University of Missouri carried out by senior students with official approval, in a tradition said to have been started in 1905 and upheld in a vote of the student body in 1920. One could regard this as analogous with canings by prefects in English schools. It seems to have been something quite different from fraternity paddling, a private unofficial activity that has more to do with hazing than punishment. Meanwhile at Texas A&M University, paddling with an ax handle has been described by one informed source as having been "the traditional method of discipline at the university" until as recently as the mid-1980s -- see this picture.
DOCUMENTS:
A Legal Analysis of Ingraham v. Wright [HISTORY]
Part of the paddled boys' testimony in the landmark 1977 Supreme Court case which upheld school corporal punishment as constitutional. (For more on this case, see "External Links" below.)
Court: School official not abuser
Report (Oct 2006) of a case in Arkansas, in which the state Court of Appeals held that bruising alone cannot be used as a test for abuse. A boy's three-swat school paddling, in which his buttocks were bruised, did not constitute abuse; and the assistant principal who administered it should not have been put on the child abuse registry, the court found.
State Laws on school corporal punishment
Extracts from legislation in those states which still (in 2008) allow paddling in schools, and one or two of those that do not.
Past regulations of school districts - 1963 [HISTORY]
Paddling regulations from Oakland (California) and Broward County (Florida) in 1963.
Past regulations of school districts - 1981 [HISTORY]
Regulations from Los Angeles in 1981, and a copy of the corporal punishment report form to be filed by the school -- all splendidly bureaucratic!
See also: Current handbooks of schools where CP is used
See also: Video clips
See also: Pictures of paddles
See also: Paddling in US schools in Topics A to Z
EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)
Trends in Discipline and the Decline in Use of Corporal Punishment [DOC]
Information note (2011) from the Florida Department of Education gives some useful statistics. Students receiving CP in Florida declined from 13,900 in 1994-95 to 3,661 in 2009-10. The number of districts using the paddle has fallen to 30 (out of 67). Figures for individual districts are given for 2009-10. The winner is Jackson, with 480 spankings recorded. Analysis of the figures reveals that all the paddling districts are in the Florida panhandle and the inland part of the peninsula: corporal punishment has disappeared entirely from the east and west coasts of the peninsula.
The document notes that, as paddlings went down in the 1990s, suspensions rose sharply by a much larger amount, though they have fallen back somewhat in the latest five years. In other words, the increased suspensions were not merely replacements for CP. One might infer from this a general collapse in discipline due at least in part, perhaps, to the loss of the deterrent effect of the paddle in those districts that have abandoned it.
Center for Effective Discipline
This anti-CP organization sets out, for each state in which CP is banned, the legislation or ruling under which abolition took place and the year. It also gives the paddling statistics for each state where CP is still used (figures for the 2005-06 school year).
And, if you scroll down a bit further, it explains the rather convoluted procedure for accessing, from the relevant federal government website, the latest estimated paddling statistics for individual school districts. As far as I am aware, this is the first time this information has been available, at this level of detail, all in one place on the internet.
Holloman v Harland and Allred and Walker County Board of Education [PDF]
Full judgment of the US Court of Appeals (2004) in a case about Michael Holloman, a schoolboy in Alabama who was paddled in 2000, aged 18, for raising his fist in protest during the Pledge of Allegiance. The court held that the school had violated his First Amendment rights to free speech. Michael chose a spanking (3 licks by the principal in his office) in preference to three days' detention, which would have prevented him from graduating. The nature of the punishment is incidental to the legal issues raised, which did not concern CP as such; but from our point of view the interesting pages in the document are 6, 7, 22, 26, 27, 87, and 88.
See also this June 2001 news item and this June 2002 follow-up for earlier stages of the case.
Fee and Fee v Herndon et al.
US Court of Appeals ruling (1990) about a sixth-grade student who was paddled at school in Texas. The boy's mother had given permission for him to be spanked, although from a strict legal point of view parental permission was not required in any case. The court threw the case out on a series of technicalities.
Florida Statutes [DOC]
Florida Department of Education document sets out the legal provisions for school corporal punishment.
Doe And Others v. Heck And Others
This is the US Court of Appeals full ruling (2003) in the Greendale Baptist Academy case. It held that Wisconsin social workers, who had entered the school without a warrant and questioned students about CP, had violated the constitution. The court upheld the parents' rights and those of the paddling school. See also this April 2003 news item.
NRS 392.4633 Corporal punishment prohibited
Current legislation outlawing CP in public schools in Nevada.
Minutes of the Senate Committee on Human Resources and Facilities
Debate (April 1993) on Senate Bill 354 in Nevada (see previous item).
Duncan Ex Rel. v Chamblee and Leake County School District (Alternative link)
Mississippi case from 1999. A schoolboy claimed to have been "violently paddled" on two successive days. As far as I can understand it, the State Supreme Court rules here (though with three judges dissenting) that his case against the school fails on a complex assortment of legal technicalities.
Sponsor Statement for HB14 [HISTORY]
Summary of a failed 1997 legislative attempt to reintroduce "corporal correction of students" in Alaska. The actual wording of the Bill can be read here [PDF].
A Shock to the Conscience: The Due Process Clause and Corporal Punishment
Article (2001) in American School Board Journal about whether the constitution places any limits on the severity of school CP.
Legitimated Violence in Schools: The Power Behind the Paddle
This "academic" essay, written in tendentious sociological jargon and published in the "Advancing Women in Leadership Journal", attacks CP from a hardline feminist and "children's rights" ideological perspective. There is a lot about "hegemonic masculinity", wherein even Desmond Morris's ancient, overheated, pseudo-anthropological fantasies about the "bent-over submissive posture" and CP as a "form of ritual copulation" are trotted out once more.
Few readers of either sex will, I suspect, be inclined to take any of this stuff seriously, but the document does include a plausible vignette of a day at a southern elementary school, including eyewitness accounts of paddlings of a girl and a boy.
The paper is mistaken, incidentally, in stating that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child "calls for a worldwide ban on corporal punishment". The Convention does nothing of the sort. The words "corporal punishment" do not appear anywhere in it, and nor does it contain any references to paddling, spanking, or any similar wording. What it does call for is the protection of children from "mental and physical violence". When countries signed up to the Convention (which, in any case, the USA has not done), they cannot reasonably have supposed that it prohibited ordinary, moderate spanking or paddling which causes no injury.
Another error is the assertion that "every industrialized nation in the world, except the U.S., has abolished corporal punishment in schools". Australia has not yet completely abolished it; more significantly, perhaps, Singapore and South Korea are certainly industrialized countries, to name but two where school CP is entirely legal and in widespread use.
Blascovich v. Shamokin Area School District
Report of a 1980 Pennsylvania case about a teacher who was sacked for cruelty, including paddling students against explicit instructions to the contrary.
Belasco v Pittsburgh Board of Public Education
Pittsburgh had already abolished CP in its schools at the time of this 1984 case about paddling at a school for retarded children.
Glaser v Marietta and Others
Yet another Pennsylvania case. This one is from 1972 and involves a complaint by a seventh-grade student whose paddling is described.
Sanctions for Breaches of Rules
Summary of various court cases relevant to school discipline (extract from a law textbook).
Education Law: Historic Supreme Court Cases (Alternative link)
Includes summaries of Goss v. Lopez (1975) and Ingraham v. Wright (1977).
Education Law in North Carolina, Chapter 18: Student conduct issues [PDF] (Alternative link)
See items 1813 to 1816 inclusive.
California Education Code 49000-49001
Text of legislation making corporal punishment illegal in public (but not private) schools in California.
Mississippi Senate Bill 2651
Would have required the state to adopt rules governing corporal punishment in schools. Died in committee (2000).
Ingraham et al v. Wright et al [HISTORY]
Legal argumentation in the famous Supreme Court case.
Ingraham v. Wright: The Return of Old Jack Seaver [HISTORY]
1978 article from "Inequality in Education" analyses this landmark case at length.
Ingraham v Wright dissenting judgment (Alternative link)
Long statement by the four judges who were in the minority. Among other things, they thought the Eighth Amendment should apply to schoolchildren as well as criminals.
Moyer v. Commonwealth [DOC]
1999 judgment in the Virginia Court of Appeals. Moyer, a teacher accused of the sexual abuse of minors, had (among other things) paddled some teenage cadets on their bare buttocks, raising the issue whether or not buttocks are "sexual parts"; the higher court held that they are not. In a dissenting judgment some of the paddlings are described. See also news item of 29 August 1997, Cadet testifies about nudity, secret rituals with teacher, in The Archive.
Lesson 5: Student/Youth Due Process Middle
Exercise for, presumably, student teachers to learn about the constitutional case law applying to school corporal punishment. Considers the Tinker, Goss and Ingraham cases.
Robert L. Daily v Board of Education (Alternative link)
Case in the Nebraska Supreme Court (February 1999) about a public school board's decision to suspend a teacher for using corporal punishment, contrary to that State's 1988 law. At issue was whether bopping a student on the head to get his attention, in the middle of a fracas, constituted corporal punishment; the lower court thought it didn't, but the higher court held that it did.
Saylor v Board of Education of Harlan County [HISTORY]
Report of case (July 1997) in US Court of Appeals. A paddled 5-foot-10-inch 14-year-old (5 licks for fighting; buttocks bruised) claimed his due process rights had been violated. The appeal court disagreed. Lots of interesting detail about the paddling (which took place in Kentucky in 1990) and the discipline situation in the school in question, and a great deal of legal analysis with references to other school paddling cases. Astute readers will find a witty joke buried in the text.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v David Douglass [HISTORY]
1991 court case about a paddling in a fundamentalist Christian school.
Testimony of Shelly Gaspersohn, October 1984 [HISTORY]
Evidence to the US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice by a young woman who had been paddled three years earlier at age 17 at Dunn High School, North Carolina. She had agreed to the punishment as an alternative to suspension but found it too severe for her taste. See also this October 1984 illustrated news item.
Reading the Law Monograph Series No 48 (Alternative link)
From the Education Law Association, an abstract of a book describing the constitutional situation and analyzing the statutes in different States.
Michigan: Information on Nonpublic and Home Schools [PDF]
Makes clear that the ban on school corporal punishment in Michigan does not apply to private schools.
Iowa Senate File 2062 [HISTORY] (New URL)
Failed 1998 proposal for legislation to reintroduce corporal punishment to Iowa schools.
Corporal punishment in public schools: the legal and political battle continues (Alternative link)
Academic legal discussion (1994) of the state of the law re paddling in US schools.
Corporal Punishment in Private Schools
Rules from the Alaska Administrative Code for private schools using corporal punishment, including a requirement for parental consent.
Outlaw Corporal Punishment [HISTORY]
Doomed 1991 attempt in US congress to ban school corporal punishment at federal level.
Harris v Tate County School District (Alternative link)
A Mississippi court holds (April 1995) that a boy's school paddling did not violate his due process rights.
Orville Harris v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Secretary of Education
Report of a court case (not to be confused with the Mississippi corporal punishment case also called Harris). This Harris was a teacher who used corporal punishment in Philadelphia, contrary to that school district's rules.
Other external links for US/Schools
UNITED STATES: School CP