School students make 100 Spanking Paddles ‘to curb juvenile delinquency’

 PHILADELPHIA (UPI) - A group of Warren County High School students sent 100 spanking paddles to this “remote city” to be applied liberally in controlling Philadelphia’s juvenile delinquency problem.

The students, all from Sheffield in the northwestern part of the state, said they were worried about the delinquency problem in Philadelphia because it has led to support of a state Senate bill prohibiting persons under 21 years of age from owning firearms.

A spokesman for the group, Robert Anderson, 17, said in a letter accompanying the paddles, his companions like to hunt and target shoot, pointing out that all of the youths in his class own one or more firearms.

“They do not want to lose them because some remote city has a delinquency problem,” Anderson said. “As a partial solution to your problem,” the letter said, “we are shipping you 100 paddles which we guarantee from our own experience can be a far greater deterrent to delinquency than any legislation.

“We suggest these be distributed to the proper places with the recommendation that they be applied liberally, as often as needed,” the letter said.

“We hate crime and delinquency as much as anyone and for our own protection want to help you solve your problems,” Anderson said, “but you should do it locally by City Ordinance so as not to interfere with us.”

The paddles, which were shipped to the Philadelphia Inquirer, were made from scrap material by the group after classes in the school shop. Each paddle is 18 inches long and has a hole drilled in the handle for hanging in home where the “applied psychology” is required.

As published in the Shamokin News-Dispatch, Shamokin, Pennsylvania, United States, 1 April 1959. (Judging by the date are you as suspicious of this report as I am?).

A possible solution? picture credit: Indiana State student handbook, 1948.

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