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9486 in the collection
Groups target corporal punishment in schools
Corporal punishment in schools remains legal in 21 U.S. states and is used frequently in 13: Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida.
See report: A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools, co-published by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Staff
The 3-year-old came home in tears from his public pre-kindergarten program, unable to adequately describe what had happened to him or how he had sustained bruises that stretched around his hips to his stomach.
His mother figured out he had been paddled at the program for taking off his shoes during class and playing with an air conditioner. When she went to school officials about the matter, she found that the paddling was allowed under school policy. Ultimately, she wound up withdrawing her son from the rural Texas school.
The boy's case was profiled in a report issued Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. He was among hundreds of thousands of children receiving corporal punishment in school, the groups said, a topic debated as hotly as corporal punishment at home. Last school year, more than 200,000 children were spanked or paddled at school, according to the organizations' joint report.
"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence, and it doesn't stop bad behavior," wrote Alice Farmer, the author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."
Corporal punishment in schools remains legal in 21 U.S. states and is used frequently in 13: Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida, according to data received from the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education and cited in the report.
The highest percentage of students receiving corporal punishment was in Mississippi, with 7.5 percent of students. The highest number was in Texas, with 48,197 students.
"When you talk to local school officials, they point to the fact that it's quick and it's effective -- and that's true," Farmer said. "It doesn't take much time to administer corporal punishment, and you don't have to hire someone to run a detention or an after-school program." But, she said, "we need forms of discipline that makes children understand why what they did was wrong."
In addition, corporal punishment can be linked to poverty and lack of resources. For instance, the report states, "teachers may have overcrowded classrooms and lack resources such as counselors to assist with particularly disruptive students or classroom dynamics."
Overall, 223,190 students received corporal punishment in 2006-07, according to the Department of Education statistics. That number is down from 342,038 students in 2000-01 as more and more districts abolished corporal punishment.
The punishment is disproportionately applied to African-American students, according to the organizations. During the 2006-07 school year, for instance, black students made up 17.1 percent of the nationwide student population but 35.6 percent of those paddled at schools.
African-American girls were paddled at twice the rate of their white counterparts in the 13 states using corporal punishment most frequently. And although boys are punished more often than girls, the report found that African-American students in general are 1.4 times more likely to receive corporal punishment.
In addition, special education students with mental or physical disabilities were more likely to receive corporal punishment, according to the organizations.
Evangelical leader James Dobson's influential Focus on the Family group is among those stopping short of calling for a full ban on paddling in schools.
"Corporal punishment is not effective at the junior and senior high school levels, and I do not recommend its application," Dobson says on the organization's Web site. "It can be useful for elementary students, especially with amateur clowns (as opposed to hard-core troublemakers). For this reason, I am opposed to abolishing spanking in elementary schools because we have systematically eliminated the tools with which teachers have traditionally backed up their word. We're now down to a precious few. Let's not go any further in that direction."
Andrea Cancellare said her then-13-year-old son was paddled -- or "swatted" -- three years ago for flicking rubber bands in class, despite the fact she had written a letter directing school officials in Alpine, Texas, not to use corporal punishment against him. School officials told her they could not find the letter when she complained.
When she approached the principal and superintendent, Cancellare said, they told her "most parents like this because it takes care of the punishment. It gets the kids back in class. It doesn't disrupt instruction. It's like the quick and dirty way of dealing with discipline problems."
Alpine Superintendent Jose Cervantes said that both the principal and superintendent have taken other jobs, but for the past several years, the district has had a clear policy allowing parents to sign a waiver form and opt out of corporal punishment.
"It works on some, and it doesn't work on others," Cervantes said. "If you're one of the individuals that it does work on, yes, it will become a deterrent."
"I don't think it's the school's place to make decisions like that," Cancellare said. "I'm not necessarily in favor of that kind of punishment in the house either, but I feel like if somebody makes that decision, it should be the parent."
Most states typically leave it up to individual districts whether to utilize corporal punishment, and some of the nation's largest school districts -- among them Houston and Dallas, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; and Mobile County, Alabama -- have banned the practice, according to the report.
Others, such as the Tyler Independent School District in Tyler, Texas, are considering it. The district's board was scheduled to meet Tuesday to vote on removing corporal punishment as a disciplinary tactic.
"We just believe that it's time for us to look at other options for our kids as opposed to corporal punishment," Superintendent Randy Reid told the Tyler Morning Telegraph. "We think there's more effective ways. Most of our principals have chosen not to use it even though it's been in the book. We're trying to create some consistency."
— staff
CNN
2008-08-20
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/20/corporal.punishment/
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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