Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, 7 April 1988

Littleton schools make spanking ban official

LITTLETON -- Fifteen years after the last spanking of a student in a Littleton school, school board members officially have banned spanking.

Officials say they revised their policy on corporal punishment to reflect what schools are doing. The board adopted the new policy Tuesday.

"Basically, the purpose of this revision was to eliminate physical punishment and to clearly define the policy for any physical restraint of students," said district spokeswoman Lyn Chambers. "Corporal punishment had not been used in any of our schools for at least the last 15 years."

The new policy bans all physical punishments and limits the physical restraint of students to situations in which the teacher is quelling a disturbance, removing a weapon or acting in self-defense.

San Francisco Chronicle, 22 April 1988

Principals, Paddles and Power

THE 8,000 MOST POWERFUL people on Earth were in San Francisco this week.

Eight thousand rulers and despots, capable of striking terror into the hearts of small, mischievous boys.

Eight thousand grammar school principals.

They filled Moscone Center for their annual convention. All that power under one roof. Amazing that the building remained in one piece.

Nothing, after all, is so powerful as a grammar school principal. He resides in a place called the Principal's Office, a chamber of horrors to be avoided at all costs. Even teachers tremble when the principal pays a surprise visit to the classroom. At such times, students aren't the only ones sitting up straighter.

In some states, a principal can give you a licking. Power doesn't get any more absolute than that.

SO WHY, with all that power, were the members of the National Association of Elementary School Principals unhappy? Why did they seek even more power?

Yes they did, for there on the convention agenda was a seminar titled "Power, Politics and the Principal: Using Power Constructively."

I infiltrated the seminar to find out. Hundreds of principals and I sat in the same room. Makes a fellow with my track record sweat, just thinking about it.

How disconcerting it all was. All the principals had left their paddles back home. They all wore those silly name tags that said they were Bob, Bill and Dorothy.

You ever meet a principal named Dorothy? No, her name is always Mrs. Troeger, as in such memorable lines as, "All right, Steve, give me the squirt gun and go down to the Principal's Office and spend the rest of the morning with Mrs. Troeger."

And here they were, with those silly-looking badges. A bunch of ordinary-looking people, of all things.

Anyway, the man in the mod shirt who was running the seminar passed out a four-page brochure, all about power.

"Power," it said. "The Potential to Influence the Behavior of Others. Sources of Power: Legitimate, Reward, Punish, Expertise, Referent, Information."

Oh brother. The source of power is not Referent, Mr. Mod Shirt. It's not Expertise or Information.

The source of the power is that wooden stick in the bottom drawer.

"Power," said Mr. Mod Shirt, warming to his topic like a paddled posterior, "depends on its acceptance by subordinates. The existence of power is an illusion. The source of power is in whether we accept the power or not.

Oh brother. Try telling the fellow with the paddle that you do not accept his power, and what do you get? An extra swat for mouthing off, that's what.

THE ASSEMBLED PRINCIPALS, a sensible if bloodthirsty lot, must have sensed it, too. A lot of them walked out of the seminar before it was over.