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Texas city revives paddling as it takes a swat at misbehavior
Texas has bucked a national trend toward eliminating corporal punishment in schools. (Tom Fox/Dallas Morning News)
[SIZE=2]By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2010 [/SIZE]
TEMPLE, TEX. -- In an era when students talk back to teachers, skip class and wear ever-more-risque clothing to school, one central Texas city has hit upon a deceptively simple solution: Bring back the paddle.
Most school districts across the country banned paddling of students long ago. Texas sat that trend out. Nearly a quarter of the estimated 225,000 students who received corporal punishment nationwide in 2006, the latest figures available, were from the Lone Star State.
But even by Texas standards, Temple is unusual. The city, a compact railroad hub of 60,000 people, banned the practice and then revived it at the demand of parents who longed for the orderly schools of yesteryear. Without paddling, "there were no consequences for kids," said Steve Wright, who runs a construction business and is Temple's school board president.
Since paddling was brought back to the city's 14 schools by a unanimous board vote in May, behavior at Temple's single high school has changed dramatically, Wright said, even though only one student in the school system has been paddled.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 04-17-2010 at 04:48 PM..
Reason: Link and a SNIPPET please
Hooray for Texas. I get so tired of thug's overuse of the term "they disrespected me" when their whole being is showing disrespect for others. A little humiliation is just what is needed. What this whole country needs more of is better discipline for our youth so that they may grow into more respectful adults.
Always abide by this saying:
Never hit a child in the face, when the lord has provided a better place.
From reading these forums, I know that there are some fans of corporal punishment who will be arriving shortly. Until they get here, I'll wade in with a different point of view.
The American Academy of Pediatrics just released a study that shows that spanking toddlers leads to children acting more aggressively. We have research from as far back as 1957 (Sears, Maccoby, and Levin) that shows a connection between severe punishment and aggression.
When punishment is not connected to the action being punished, it is less effective. For example, if you stick gum under a desk, an appropriate punishment would be to stay after hours and clean desks. If a child is paddled, it's the paddle he learns to avoid. By cleaning up his messes, he learns the consequences of his actions and perhaps begins to value community property more.
The goal of school discipline should be to develop intrinsic motivation to do the right thing -- children who behave in the desired fashion even when they are not being watched. Corporal punishment only develops a fear of getting caught; students who think they can get away with something will. I'd like to see if this district in TX has any long-term gains from their new policy.
This type of punishment is useless for modeling desired behavior/values.
Corporal punishment is often humiliating to the child. Unfortunately, the child often connects the feeling of humiliation with the person giving out the punishment, not with the action that led to the punishment. A humiliated child or a child with low self esteem is not an effective learner (follows from needs theory, Maslow). Data seems to suggest that students respond best to teachers they like. (Wouldn't feeling humiliated by a teacher be the opposite of liking that person?) And, yes, there are effective ways of responding to bad behavior that don't result in long-term dislike of a teacher.
Some children have Oppositional Defiant Disorder. (This can co-occur with ADHD or other disorders.) One must be very creative and careful when disciplining these children, because it can lead to a power struggle. In a school setting, children can almost always out ugly an adult. After all, what are you going to do, escalate the physical punishment to the point where it is abusive?
In adult life, we respond to consequences and incentives. We are also empathetic in considering the effects of our actions on others. We are rarely punished or rewarded for our behaviors. This desired adult response to consequences, incentives, and concern for others must be taught just as most other desired behaviors are taught to children (modeling them is one way of teaching them). Paddling neither teaches self-control nor models positive behavior. All it models is violence.
I've also read "we wouldn't have so many people in prison if someone had given those guys a good swat when they were children." Here's an alternative point of view. Most United States inmates are high school dropouts who are functionally illiterate (http://forumforeducation.org/files/u1/FED_ReportRevised415.pdf (broken link)). If we had addressed their learning needs by the third grade, the time by which students should be fluent readers, maybe they would enjoy school more and be better equipped to stick it out. See, no punishment needed.
The argument I most often read in favor of corporal punishment is "it worked for my kids." Well, your kids are only one case study; the results you got with them are not generalizable to the public at-large. Also, you can't get inside their heads to know how it impacted their emotional health.
You mention that most people in prison are functionally illiterate, and I have no trouble believing that. One of the problems with education is that lack of discipline leads to an environment where learning can't take place. There has to be some way to put the teachers and administrators back in charge of the schools, so that students can learn better. Maybe then we'll have fewer functional illiterates.
Presently, our favored way of dealing with discipline problems seems to be to either drug the kids, or just allow the problem to grow until the whole school is completely disrupted by a certain group of students who aren't learning anything anyway. I sometimes wonder whether an occasional swat is less harmful than pumping a kid full of ritalin without knowing what the long-term effects of that will be. Every choice, including the one to use means other than physical punishment, has a downside to it.
And I say all this as someone who's not a particular fan of corporal punishment.
You mention that most people in prison are functionally illiterate, and I have no trouble believing that. One of the problems with education is that lack of discipline leads to an environment where learning can't take place. There has to be some way to put the teachers and administrators back in charge of the schools, so that students can learn better. Maybe then we'll have fewer functional illiterates.
Presently, our favored way of dealing with discipline problems seems to be to either drug the kids, or just allow the problem to grow until the whole school is completely disrupted by a certain group of students who aren't learning anything anyway. I sometimes wonder whether an occasional swat is less harmful than pumping a kid full of ritalin without knowing what the long-term effects of that will be. Every choice, including the one to use means other than physical punishment, has a downside to it.
And I say all this as someone who's not a particular fan of corporal punishment.
This is insane. I have had the same kids disrupting my classes all year. Beyond calling mom or sending them to the office frequently enough to get them an in house suspension, there's nothing I can do and neither of those tactics seems to work.
I have to agree on physical punishment instead of drugs as well. I have a brother who is severely ADHD. He is so bad that it affected his growth. His arms, legs and neck grew to exaggerated lenghts.
My parents made the decision to take him off of Ritalin when he was about 5. He's had his struggles but he has learned to cope with his condition. He is now a college graduate with a six figure job.
I was diagnosed as ADD as an adult. No treatment is required because I've already developed the coping mechanisms I need (one is I flit from task to task like I'm doing right now in posting between grading papers, writing lesson plans and planning labs. It takes me longer than a normal person this way but I do get the job done and I can't just sit down and do one job so we're done. Works with my students to. My inability to stay on one task long means they don't sit through boring hour long lectures. I have to break them up wiht activities.) How did I learn to cope? I got my butt kicked at home for not making decent grades enough that I figured it out.
When I was growing up, I had a 6th-grade teacher at Lakewood elementary school. His name was Mr. Young. Mr. Young didn't tolerate rudeness or disrespect. I'll always remember him encouraging his students to disagree with him or each other, and to make a case why, but you damn sure better have done it politely. He was a great guy, very fair, and a superb teacher. He demanded respect, but he also gave it in equal measure.
But if you crossed him, he had two paddles named "Thunder" and "Lightning" that he kept by his desk. If you were rude or mean to someone else, he would make you come to the front of the class and, depending on what you did, he would deliver a certain number of whacks. These paddles were cross-drilled for maximum airflow, and they hurt. I mean you didn't walk right the rest of the day. But you behaved in his class. If you were in Mr. Young's homeroom class, any teacher that had a problem with you reported it to Mr. Young, and he took care of it, to the tune of 3 or 4 whacks.
People behaved in his class. Period.
I went back and saw Mr. Young years later. He looked remarkably the same, a little grayer maybe. He told me then he never enjoyed paddling students, that he felt it meant he had failed a little bit. But he also said that "discipline is discipline" and that he made the rules very clear, and it was a student's choice to disobey them.
That was almost 20 years ago, and I still remember him. Best teacher I ever had, bar none.
So you can tell me all the statistics and studies you want to, but in the end, corporal punishment works. You're not dealing with adults here, no matter how much some people or the court system wants to make them so. They are still kids, and act like it. You don't have to be mean about it, but kids need a swat on the ass now and then.
No paddle, disipline went down. Bring back paddle, disipline went up. Case closed.
This is faulty analysis of data.
For example, we know that exercise protects against heart disease. Yet, if someone has a heart attack it is not necessarily caused by a lack of exercise.
Even if one interprets this limited data set as showing that paddling works, the inverse is not necessarily true; a lack of paddling can not be definitively tied to a lack of discipline.
Perhaps this limited sample of Texas schools got the results they wanted from paddling. What the data lack is the following information: 1) what will the long-term results of this discipline strategy be; 2) what were the negative social/emotional impacts of the paddling; and 3) are children with emotional problems and learning disabilities being paddled more often?
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This is insane. I have had the same kids disrupting my classes all year. Beyond calling mom or sending them to the office frequently enough to get them an in house suspension, there's nothing I can do and neither of those tactics seems to work. 
