‘Let’s not get nostalgic for CP in schools’

The surest way for a politician to get a reaction online is by tweeting something outrageous. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these provocations are best ignored.

But once in a while, this kind of unserious tweet merits discussion because leaving it unexamined perpetuates harmful ideas. For example, St. Louis Alderman Jeffrey Boyd recently posed this question on Twitter: “Do anyone remember when (St. Louis Public Schools) had a paddle that had ‘BOE’ engraved on it? Teachers and Administrators rarely had a problem with discipline and children were able to truly learn without a lot of disruptions ...” writes Aisha Sultan, on the website Parents Talk Back (21 February 2022).

She goes on ….

This observation makes as much sense as reminiscing about when schools were segregated and school shootings rarely happened. Or saying, “Remember when husbands could beat their wives, back before laws made it a crime? There sure were fewer divorces back then.”

These absurd and offensive statements illustrate that even if two things happen around the same time, it doesn’t mean one causes the other.

I called Boyd to ask him what he really meant by his tweet.

“I’m not advocating for (corporal punishment),” he said. “All I’m saying is ‘Hey, what happened? Now that we don’t have it, kids are running amok.’”

In fact, there are several reasons why some schools may be dealing with more disciplinary issues than they did in years past: A greater number of students have diagnoses of significant mental illnesses and emotional problems, for one thing. A far greater percentage of households are headed by single parents or two working parents. Children are growing up immersed in technology and social media in ways previous generations never experienced. There are greater numbers of public school students whose families struggle with poverty and homelessness. And in recent years, we’ve seen parents publicly attacking teachers and school officials -- insulting and threatening them on social media and at school board meetings.

Social media is not exactly famous for its nuanced, deliberate discussions on controversial topics. Surely, as a Black man, Boyd understood that opining about the good ol’ days of swatting kids with a paddle to keep them in line would generate some feelings.

In 19 states, including Missouri, it’s legal for schools to use physical pain (corporal punishment) to discipline students. It’s well documented that those bearing the brunt of those punishments are Black children.

Gillian Grant noted in a 2021 essay in the Law Journal for Social Justice that even though its use in schools has declined steadily over the past few decades, nearly 70,000 public school students still received corporal punishment in the 2017-2018 school year.

Grant detailed the disproportionate impact of who gets hit in school: More than 75% attend school in one of these five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi or Texas. Black boys are almost twice as likely to experience corporal punishment as white boys, and Black girls experience corporal punishment three times as often as white girls, she noted.

Stacey Patton, author of “Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America,” argues that spanking and corporal punishment are vestiges of slavery -- when slaveowners used beatings and brutality to control Black bodies.

Geoff Ward, a sociologist at Washington University, published a study in 2019 revealing a disturbing connection: Counties that had historically experienced a greater number of lynchings had a higher rate of use of corporal punishment in schools, especially against Black students.

Boyd told me that he was spanked as a child, as was common practice then. But he chose to discipline his own children differently.

“We realized you don’t have to be that harsh” to give a child consequences or address inappropriate behavior, he said.

Schools that have abandoned corporal punishment have likely come to the same conclusion, I said.

And while we are pondering the way society’s tolerance for physical punishment has changed over the years, consider this: Purposefully and intentionally causing injury or suffering to an animal is against the law in Missouri. However, a principal or teacher is legally allowed to purposefully and intentionally paddle a first grader.

Perhaps Boyd could have tweeted about that.

Picture credit: Unknown.

 

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