Spanking students might not be right way to discipline, but it’s better than some marks
A Georgia school recently made the rounds on national news by reinstating corporal punishment.
Quite frankly, I’ve never understood what folks have against corporals or why of all the military ranks they are the ones who need a spanking. Certainly Sgt. Carter deserved a few spankings for the way he treated poor Gomer Pyle, and Captain Morgan probably deserves a few spankings for the way I’ve behaved in a beach bar or two. But I’ve never known corporals to be too bad.
The school at the center of the story is a charter school in Hephzibah called the Georgia School of Innovation and the Classics. And what’s more classic than whipping a disruptive brat every now and then?
I have mixed feelings about the issue of spanking school children. For one, I don’t have a dog, er, I mean a child in this fight. My son is attending a university in Scotland, so I don’t think spanking will be much of an issue there. I believe the standard punishment for misbehavior in Scotland is to blast “Amazing Grace” at the accused with bagpipes. This obviously would not happen in America because we have rules against cruel and unusual punishment.
Also, the last time I spanked a school child, parents got very upset and started jumping out of their cars in the student pickup line and screaming, “You don’t even work here! Get away from my child, you freak!” Yep, some parents are just way too overprotective and politically correct. That’s how you get snowflakes, I say. And how dare they criticize how I like to spend my days off!
Quite frankly, I haven’t read enough studies to decide whether corporal punishment is an effective deterrent. I have looked at the issue from a few angles, though.
I had a first grade teacher who hit every kid’s hand with a ruler, often, and a second grade math teacher who twisted my ear to help me think. To this day, I still get an earache when I see numbers. Tax day is a nightmare. My kindergarten teacher, though, was very pretty, and it wasn’t exactly a deterrent to get spanked with her yardstick called “Hot Stick Hunt.” You got to sign it when you got whipped, and by the end of the school year you couldn’t read any numbers on it through the multiple signings of my and my cousin’s name.
I did have a typing teacher in high school who terrified everyone, including her own children. While some parents don’t want their own kids subject to corporal punishment, she apparently had no problem with it.
“I told the principal that if one of my kids ever gets sent to your office, I don’t want you to spank them,” she once told us in class. “I want you to beat them. Then you need to call me so I can beat them.”
Still, I’d rather have three licks with a wooden paddle than days of detention or weeks of some other crazy punishment … like reading. I remember sitting in a high school football coach’s office when his star linebacker got sent to him for three licks. This 240-pound linebacker made of pure steel bent over and later looked back at the coach like, “You ‘bout through? I need to get back to class.” I’m pretty sure the coach dislocated an elbow. Hopefully that kid got the message, though, and didn’t kill any more janitors.
Studies have clearly shown that corporal punishment is administered disproportionately to students of color and to students with disabilities. Fortunately, the school in Georgia gives parents the option of whether they will allow their child to be spanked or receive other forms of punishment.
If you’re a parent of a student of color who also has a disability, I probably wouldn’t give anybody permission to strike your child. As for every other parent, I guess that’s up to you. As for every other student, how ‘bout you just behave so no one has to debate this?
Connect with Chris Johnson at KudzuKid.com.