More than a slap on the wrist
Corporal punishment allowed in nearly half of United States
By Bethany Barnett, contributing writer
Posted on October 5, 2006

Though banned in a majority of states, corporal punishment is still being used to whip some students into shape.

According to Staunton City Schools Superintendent Harry Lunsford, corporal punishment is banned in 28 states but is still widely practiced in the “Bible Belt” states of the Deep South and in parts of the Midwest.

Jimmy Dunne, a former teacher from Houston currently works to abolish corporal punishment, which he calls “legalized child abuse.” In 1981, he founded POPS — People Opposed to Paddling Students. The organization holds demonstrations outside of schools where paddling is practiced, and speaks out to superintendents and principals of these schools and districts.

During his first year as a middle school math teacher, Dunne took part in paddling to reprimand students.

“I started thinking, why are we doing this?” he said. “A teacher down the hall was paddling kids every week. An 11-year-old boy crying, begging for mercy is a pitiful situation.”

Though corporal punishment has been banned in Virginia, it still takes place in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, according to the New York Times. While the practice is in decline, Dunne and his supporters are stunned that it is still legal in the first place.

“Some teachers get some sadistic pleasure paddling kids,” Dunne said. “With POPS, people tell us about specific cases and we go to the school board.”

However, some still see corporal punishment as an effective tool. Anthony Price is a principal at a middle school in Fort Worth, Texas, and recently reinstated the practice of paddling in his school.

“I’m a big fan,” Price said in a New York Times article. “If used properly, along with other punishments, a few pops can help turn a school around.”

Dunne disagrees. He believes that physically punishing students at school encourages the same abuse at home. According to the POPS Web site, in Texas, child fatalities caused by abuse were up more than 10 percent and twice as many children died from abuse as from the previous decade.

While corporal punishment may not directly be the cause of such abuse, it certainly does not demote the practice. Will Williams is a musician in Maryland who remembers paddling and other forms of abuse taking place when he attended a Rhode Island Catholic school in the 1960s. In elementary school, en route to the bathroom, one of the nuns tripped and fell.

“She looked at me and said, ‘You tripped me!’” he said. “A younger nun shook me, smacked me a few times, and took me to a wire cage where the custodian’s equipment was held. She locked me in there until everyone had gone to the bathroom.

Williams recalls a classmate of his being paddled in the office at school. “The nun accidentally left the intercom on, and everyone could hear the kid crying,” he said.
Ultimately, those against corporal punishment see it as a problem for children’s future actions. In 2004, Dunne sent a letter to a newspaper in Groveton, Texas, concerning a fifth-grade-boy who had been badly beaten by a coach.

“Adults are role models for children’s behavior,” he said. “When we hit, slap or spank, children learn to hit.”