It’s a poll.
Yeppers. Indianapolis Public Schools in the 1970s.
Texas 1980s. I only got licks for leaving my football equipment out on occasion. Others on the team got licks for having unsatisfactory behavior on their report cards.
Marc
Yep- the cane (or the cuts as they were known).
My Mum tells me of getting hit on the knees with the corner of a one inch square piece of wood.
No. NYS, Late 80s to 2000.
Yes, Texas in the 70s. I never saw the principal use it, although it was leaning against the sill of his window and was the first thing you saw when you entered his office.
The coaches though? Dear God. I played sports throughout and everyone on the team would gather to watch kids get swats. You’d strip down to your skivvies, bend over and they’d pop the everlovin’ shit out of you.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Made your ass look like a Big Chief tablet.
It was still in place during my years in school [lived in Ohio County–I graduated in 1986].
Yes. I went to school in rural Louisiana up until 1991. Almost all teachers had a paddle usually made by students as a gift from the wood shop class. They differed in size and weight. Some had holes drilled in them to supposedly make it hurt worse. We were asked to sign the paddle before getting the licks and we always liked looking at the list of names on a given teacher’s paddle.
I got paddled about 6 or 7 times over the years. A few of those were in front of the class. To be honest, most people don’t realize that paddling is about the best punishment you could get. Three licks was standard and you could trade in each lick for a day of suspension, detention, or service like cleaning up trash. No one ever chose any of those over the licks. Paddling didn’t truly hurt and it was over right away. The only time they really wanted to hurt someone was when the student was a star football player who did something especially terrible. The football coach took over from there and took the student in question to the locker room for special handling. That was brutal but regular corporal punishment was a walk in the park.
I would love it if they had something like that for my job instead of some boss type droning on and on or getting into miscellaneous trouble for something stupid. I would definitely take the three licks if it got people to be quiet after the fact.
Catholic School…12 years. It was expected.
In grade school yes, 1980. Not in high school.
The nuns were all about paddlin’ kids. The principal (a nun, most of the kids were afraid of her) had a big wooden paddle with holes in it, with the word love painted on it.
I was paddled in 3rd grade, because someone blamed me for something I didn’t even know about, much less do. I was hauled outside the classroom and the principal whacked away on my ass, and I had no idea what was going on. I still remember quite vividly. Of course, my protests and questions were dismissed as irrelevant.
Yes.
Valdosta GA public schools, 1960s.
Elememtary School – paddles made from these with the rubber ball & rubber band removed.
Junior High – true paddles often with holes drilled in them supposedly to let the air get out of the way and cause more pain when they land.
In Junior High, simply being in the hallway in between classes without an official pass was considered full proof that you had been sent out into the hall to be paddled by the teachers who were doing hall patrol duty that day.
One could also be sent to the vice principal’s office for a sturdier whacking, usually with a note detailing the offense.
There was no ‘hearing’ or opportunity to contest the matter.
Catholic school, Harrisburg PA, mid-1960s, and yes.
First grade teacher (“Reptile”; her real name was Sister Reparata but my sibs had a different name for her) slapped kids. Not just for misbehavior (which could at least arguably be said to be deserved) but for mistakes. Made a lasting impression on me, all right :rolleyes:. When we were in second grade, the teacher (for reasons that still confuse me) was trying to shame one girl for a bad report card, so she made that girl go back to first grade and show her report card to Reptile. Who responded by slapping her and knocking her down.
Fourth grade teacher would smack kids with her ruler. Rumor had it she hit one kid (a year or two before I had her) with the metal edge of a ruler and cut his hand and it got infected, which led to a chewing-out (of teacher by parent / principal) and cessation of the medal-edge ruler. Again, bad-tempered nun.
Sixth grade teacher (lay teacher) would swat kids with her yardstick. Oddly, we all loved that teacher. Every year, the yardstick would wind up cracking and breaking by some time in the spring, and every year, her class would chip in and buy her a new one. I’m guessing that her general personality - strict but with a great sense of humor - made the yardstick a combination annoyance / shared joke, rather than another aspect of a nasty abusive personality.
Lest anyone take the above as a broad statement that “nuns = evil teachers, non-nuns = beloved teachers”, that’s definitely not what I meant. It happened to be generally true at my grade school - I had only 2 nun teachers I liked and no lay teachers that I hated - but in high school I had many wonderful nuns as teachers. My theory is the sisters at the grade school went into teaching because they felt the call to the religious life and teaching was simply what one wound up doing regardless of one’s inclination / talent / personality, while the teachers at high school were truly in it for the joy of teaching.
Yep. California public schools in the 60s. Since both my parents taught in the same district, my principals were all told that if I got out of line “Beat him at school, then call me so I can beat him at home.” 
Only got swatted with the big paddle once, and I deserved it, sorta. The whole lot of us were told to face the door, grab our ankles and he sent each of us back to class with a swat.
Yes. City of St Louis public schools…I graduated from high school in '73. I’d been swatted by hand, with pointers (basically a cane), rulers, yardsticks, paddles, whistle lanyards, and probably other stuff I don’t remember. (I wasn’t the best pupil around.) The one time I accidently let slip in conversation that a teacher had hit me that day, my dad smacked me one, then asked me what I’d done to deserve it. He was right, of course. I deserved every time a teacher whacked me one.
Yes. NY in the 70s. I recall a teacher going so far as having a newspaper article on the bulletin boards stating teachers were permitted to physically punish students.
Never saw it done, however.
My public school years were in Toronto in the 1960s. For my first few years of school, you could get “the strap,” and a few of my classmates did. Then it was banned, probably around 1967 or so. All the school was left with was a trip to the principal’s office, detention, suspension, calling your parents, and similar.
Yes, Arizona in the 80s. Paddling seemed to be reserved for boys, though, which never seemed fair to me. They had 2 different sized paddles, with the larger for the junior high. The principal was responsible for the paddling. I remember one particularly incorrigible junior high kid who had the paddle break while he was being paddled. He said that actually hurt quite a bit.
Mid 70’s in Michigan. Yes, the principal had a paddle that would be applied when appropriate.
I wasn’t the most well behaved child, but I never got the paddle, so I imagine you had to really be in trouble in order to get sent down to the office for a firm application of the “board of education” to the “seat of knowledge”
Just the knowledge that it was there was enough to keep most kids in line.
Christian school, 1980-81ish. It is part of the reason I was pulled out and homeschooled. Mom was not pleased when I was black and blue the next day.
ETA - this was first grade.
Nope, Chicago Public Schools did not in the 60s and 70s. In fact, we got one teacher fired for imposing such punishment. He would make kids get in the push-up position on their knuckles, or stand leaning forward with their pointer fingers extended against the wall and bearing their weight.
One time I was clowning around when he had me in the push-up position and he cracked me across the ass with a pointer, saying something like “Your mother said that would work and apparently it does.” That pissed me off more than the swat, because I knew my parents reserved to themselves the right to wallop me.
When I told my mom, she complained to the principal, and the teacher was gone within a week. (This guy was a loon, so I don’t know that the corporal punishment was the sole cause for his ouster, but it sure seemed to be what got things rolling.)