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Human rights groups in the United States are calling on Washington to ban corporal punishment in schools, following a new report that shows the practice is still widely prevalent across the country.
The Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union report listed 223,190 incidents of corporal punishment meted out at U.S. schools in 2006-2007 that included that of a 16-year-old, obviously pregnant, who is hit by the principal because she is late.
In another incident a three-year-old boy with attention deficit disorder comes home terrified with bruises from hips to belly button after being beaten for taking off his shoes and playing with an air conditioner.
The number of incidents is down 48,838 from 2005-2006, but the practice remains surprisingly common and popular in parts of the United States, most notably in the poor, rural South. The report said 21 states currently allow corporal punishment in schools, where educators enjoy blanket immunity from lawsuits. Corporal punishment is banned in 106 countries including Canada, where it was outlawed in 2004.
“This is the way it's always been done in these communities. They see good discipline as a way of getting a good education,” says Alice Walker, the report's author, adding that “some educators like it because it's quick and it's cheap.”
Called paddling or licks or pops, the punishment involves hitting a child on the rump or upper thighs with a wooden board. Ms. Walker thinks the approach is deeply problematic: “It creates a violent and chaotic environment where students learn that people bigger than them can use violence to lash out. Students become angry after they become hit and they want to take it out on their teachers.”
She argues the solution is a shortsighted one: it may halt bad behaviour in the short-term, but in the long-term fails to teach students why their behaviour was wrong. But the figures also unearthed some glaring disparities.
Mississippi, with 7.5 per cent, has the highest percentage of students receiving corporal punishment, while Texas, with 48,197 students, has the highest number. Boys, African Americans, native Americans, and children with disabilities were all beaten disproportionately to their numbers.
In Texas, disabled children make up 10.7 per cent of the student population, but 18.4 per cent of those hit. African Americans make up 17.1 per cent of the student population, but received 35.6 per cent of the beatings; and in the 13 states where paddling is most prevalent, African American girls were beaten at double the rate of their white counterparts.
“Many of the people I Interviewed felt there was a link between corporal punishment and slavery,” says Ms. Walker. It is a system that leaves parents with little recourse.
Those who don't want their children beaten can in some districts sign an opt-out form, but Human Rights Watch reports these are sometimes ignored as paddling often occurs in a chaotic environment where educators don't always stop to check their forms. The report describes a culture of intimidation where beatings serve as a public warning to other students: principles turn on loudspeakers while beating students, staff roam hallways with paddles, and teachers display their “boards of education” on their desks.
It also raises the ugly spectre of sexual harassment and child degradation: “The instruments used and the position of the child during the beatings are designed to cause pain and humiliation to the child. This, combined with the fact that blows are administered by mostly male school officials who are supposed to set an example, lead to an atmosphere of humiliation, violence, and degradation. This atmosphere, in some cases tinged with sexual undertones—as when teenage girls are paddled by men — is not conducive to creating a learning environment characterized by safety and mutual respect,” reads the report.
Even infractions as minor as running in the halls and going to the bathroom without permission resulted in beatings.
“You could get a paddling for almost anything. I hated it. It was used as a way to degrade, embarrass students,” said Sean D., an 18-year-old student interviewed by the organization.
Ms. Walker believes such violent school environments not only erode trust between students and educators, but contribute to drop-out rates.
“Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect them. They leave that principal's office and they think, ‘they don't consider me as a human being,' ” says Doreen W., a Mississippi school board member interviewed by Human Rights Watch.
