At least 19 states in U.S. using corporal punishment
More than 160,000 children in 19 states are the victims of corporal punishment in schools each year, new research suggests, with African- American children in a few southern school districts about 50% more likely than white students to be smacked or paddled – USA Today reports in 2016.
160,000
kids receive corporal punishment
Physical
punishment more prevalent in majority black areas
Using
data issued periodically by the federal government’s Civil Rights Data
Collection (CRDC), researchers found that black students in several other
southern states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee — also
are more likely to get corporal punishment.
The
prevalence of corporal punishment in schools has been steadily dropping since
the 1970s — it fell from about 4% of schoolchildren in 1978 to less than 0.5%
today, largely because half of states banned school corporal punishment between
1974 and 1994.
But since
then, researchers say, only a handful more states have followed suit.
At the
same time, federal reports on school discipline have downplayed corporal
punishment’s role, even though the data continue to be collected.
“This is
hidden for a lot of Americans,” said Elizabeth Gershoff, a developmental
psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin who led the research.
“Even
though it’s a small percentage, for those 160,000 kids, they’re being hit and
hurt and it’s affecting their educations. That’s still a lot of kids.”
Still,
Gershoff cautioned that the higher prevalence of corporal punishment for black
students doesn’t necessarily imply discrimination within schools or classrooms.
In many
of these districts, she said, black students — and presumably black educators —
are in the majority.
“When we
say ‘ disparity,’ it doesn’t mean discrimination, necessarily. It means that
it’s just more prevalent in those communities.”
Gershoff
and a colleague found that 19 states still allow public school personnel to use
corporal punishment from preschool to high school. The states are all in the
South or West: Alabama, Ar- kansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
In these
states, a total of 163,333 children were subject to corporal punishment in
during the 2011– 12 school year, and Gershoff said newer data show similar
figures.
“If you
look at some of these states, upwards of 80% of schools are using it — all of
those children in those schools could be subject to it,” Gershoff said.
“Beyond
the numbers, the fact that any child is being hit with a board is something to
be concerned about.
“Most
American parents would not consider hitting their child with a board, yet
that’s legal for school personnel to do in these 19 states.”
She noted
that CDRC has been collecting the discipline data since the 1970s, “but they
have not done any reports on it — so I think a lot of Americans don’t realize
it’s still happening. Whenever I tell people that I’m doing this research,
they’re like, ‘ What? This is still legal?’ Yes it is. Americans need to face
that fact and if we don’t like that, we should change that.”
As
published in USA Today International Edition, 7 October 2016
Picture credit: Spanking Central
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