If schools ban paddling, say goodbye to Hot Stick Hunt

U.S. Education Secretary John B King Jr., has called for schools across America to outlaw corporal punishment once and for all. I don’t know what he has against corporals, but this seems like something the Secretary of Defense should handle.

What? Oh, he means paddling in schools. Ahh, well, that’s different. I thought paddling already was outlawed in schools and was something only in the memories of kids of the 1970s, like myself, and earlier.

But, no. Paddling is still allowed in 15 states, and another 12 have yet to specifically outlaw it. Most of the paddling, 80 percent, occurs in just eight states — Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma. These states also often rank in the bottom half of educational rankings, proving that you can’t beat the stupid out of folks.

I have mixed feelings on this. Many folks my age and older share stories of the teachers who paddled them with laughs. It was like a rite of passage to get a paddling in school.

In kindergarten, I went through an awful lot of rites of passages with Miss Hunt’s paddle, better known as Hot Stick Hunt. When you got paddled by Miss Hunt, you got to write your name on the paddle. My cousin and I were in the same kindergarten class and wound up covering that paddle with our names. We thought Miss Hunt was really pretty, and I guess getting spanked by Miss Hunt wasn’t exactly a deterrent as it was as close as we got to romance in 1975.

My second grade math teacher was a bit more painful. I hated math, and she never paddled me, but she would twist my ear to supposedly help me think. Indeed, I thought I’d never like math, ever, and I turned out to be right. My second grade science teacher, meanwhile, was obviously a socialist as instead of paddling guilty individuals when the class got rowdy, she’d have each of us parade past her desk and get smacked on the hand with a ruler.

Fortunately, the paddlings at school for me didn’t extend very far into my academic career. Nor did studying or much else school-related. But I had my share of detention, and I had a few teachers who would try something constructive like making me write an essay as punishment. Then they’d get back an essay with a title like, “The American Education System Is Collapsing and the Tyrants Behind It.”

“Chris, I only told you to write a two-page essay.”

“I know, but I had 10 pages of thought on it. You can apply eight of the pages to the next four things you wrongly blame me for.”

Perhaps the threat of corporal punishment is deterrent enough in some cases. I used to ride a school bus where we all believed the driver kept a paddle with nails protruding from it. Unless his name was Negan, I suspect that was untrue, but it was the quietest bus I’ve ever ridden.

Most importantly, what we need are parents to hold their children accountable so that paddling doesn’t come up to begin with. Well, unless you were like my ninth-grade typing teacher whose children went to that same school. She warned the principal not to spank her children if they got sent to the office.

“You better not paddle my young’uns,” she told the principal. “If they get sent you, you better beat ‘em. And when you get through, call me so I can beat ‘em.”

Come to think of it, that was an awfully quiet typing class, too.

This story was originally published November 28, 2016 at 12:29 PM with the headline "If schools ban paddling, say goodbye to Hot Stick Hunt."