Paddle still used in schools in America’s South

 

Corporal punishment in schools was still legal in 19 US states in 2021, the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] reported at the time.

While physical discipline has been outlawed in US military training centres, juvenile detention facilities and as punishment for a crime, slapping or spanking a child remained legal in 19 states across the country.

Nineteen US states – mostly in the country's south – allowed corporal punishment in schools. Rules in each state vary regarding what type of paddle can be used, how hard administrators are permitted to strike the child and whether “bodily injury” to the student is permissible.

Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia were among the states where the practice is used, though individual school districts within these states may vote to bar the practice.

Some Southern lawmakers were working to ban the practice. Louisiana Congresswoman Stephanie Hilferty sponsored a bill that, if passed, would make corporal punishment illegal in the state. According to Ms Hilferty, 744 students were disciplined with that form of punishment in the last full school year before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Similar measures have failed in recent years, with some opponents saying the issue should be left to individual school districts.

Louisiana and Tennessee have made some changes in the past five years, amending their laws to ban school districts from using paddles or spankings to punish children with disabilities.

Still, it has been a decade since a state-wide ban has actually been passed. New Mexico in 2011 passed legislation prohibiting corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool in schools.

In 1977, the US Supreme Court found that the Eighth Amendment – which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment – did not apply to school students, meaning that teachers could use physical punishment without parental permission.

There is no federal ban on corporal punishment. Though the practice has steadily declined over time, more than 106,000 children were physically punished at US public schools during the 2013-2014 school year - the most recent year for which national data is available - according to the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

 

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