Brandon, Manitoba - I graduated High School 1979. We had the strap throughout Elementary School and Junior High. It was a strap of thick, layered leather about 1 inch wide, 1/4 of an inch thick, and about a foot long, folded in the middle. For severe cases, the Principal or Vice-Principal would hold the bottom end away from the fold and give it an extra snap as it unfolded. Into the palm of the hand, interestingly. Various ne’er-do-wells had tried things like putting sugar on the palm of their hands so they would bleed. This would make the strapper feel bad and take it easy. Salt was also recommended, but why you’d want salt pushed into your recently punctured skin was never adequately explained. There did not tend to be a large correlation between high intelligence and getting the strap often in our school. (That isn’t as snobby as it might sound - the smart ones just figured out how not to get caught…)
My junior high school allowed it. This was in Texas (the Houston area), back in the mid-eighties. I suspect it’s why I’m against the death penalty, now, and why I’ve got an inherent distrust of authority figures to this day.
You see, back in junior high, I was… well, pretty damned lazy. I hated doing homework, but I aced the tests. Anyway, one of punishments for not doing homework was that you’d have to sit through detention. I hated detention just as much as I hated homework.
Well, one day the Assistant Principal pulled me out of class- he said that I hadn’t attended detention the day before, and that as a result I was assigned two more days of detention, and three “pops” with the paddle. No arguing, and no appeal- that’s just what was going to happen.
Of course, I *had *actually attended that detention. I have no idea why they thought I’d skipped it. I ended up with two more days of detention, and I got paddled.
And I never trusted the administrators again.
Iowa, 1972-81, and oddly enough, NO. Never so much as mentioned. And we were a small-city, 95+ per cent White system where quite a few kids were booked up Wednesdays for church youth night.
Of course, our being home to a large state university with a respected college of education might have queered the results a bit.
Also, Iowans are Iowans, not Hoosiers or Michiganders or Pennsylvanians.
Yes, in elementary school (public school, mid-to-late seventies). As far as I can remember, it wasn’t real common; it consisted of several swats on the behind with something like a ping pong paddle, and it was done in private, not in front of the rest of the class.
“Paddling the school canoe? You’d better believe that’s a paddlin’!”
I thought it was required!
Catholic school for me, 12 years, graduated from high school in 1972. The nuns hit me early and often with a variety of implements. The Jesuits less so, but their strength and vigor made the plausible threat a sufficient deterrent.
Yes, elementary and junior high at Indianapolis Baptist Schools (obviously, private), through at least 1989. Can’t verify whether corporal punishment was also done in high school; once I left after 8th grade, I cut all ties with the place.
The ability to punish corporally was written into the contract parents had to sign upon enrolling their children. My mom scored through those portions of the contract from 4th grade on, pointedly letting the school know she did not approve of them doing it… yet it continued anyway, one of the biggest reasons she pulled me before high school. Something about having a school principal beating her junior-high-aged son on the legs with a large fraternity-style paddle didn’t sit well with her, I suppose. The principal was gone before the next school year, for obvious reasons, but at that point there was no going back.
I went to school in West Virginia, same as the OP, and yes, it was allowed. I only remember it happening in grade school in the 60’s, though, and then only once or twice with a really misbehaved kid. It was a Big Deal when it happened. I remember the teacher taking the kid out of class and marching him down the hall to the principal’s office, leaving the class all abuzz with rumor of what he had done to deserve such a fate.
Rural Colorado in the '60s. Oh, yeah. Then you probably got it again from your parents when you got home. At least I did.
Rural Virginia in late 70’s/early 80’s. Yep, I got a paddlin’ or two.
Nope. Not permitted at all in NJ public schools since at least the 1950s. Don’t know if the state law allowed it to happen in private schools.
Don’t know if it was allowed or not, but my public school on a Canadian army post in Germany in the early '80s had a nun as a music teacher.
Forget your recorder once, it was stand in the corner for 15 minutes without moving a muscle. Second time, it was 1/2 an hour. Third time it was the whole class, and every time thereafter.
She also taped up some kid’s mouth and put him in the hall for talking. I remember seeing him standing there, tears streaming down his face.
Another time a girl in the second row was acting up. She reached over the front row, grabbed the front of her shirt, pulled her over the kids in front of her and gave her a walloping on her backside. Looked pretty damn painful.
Lutheran parochial school in the 60’s. BIG paddle (actually I think it was a breadboard). They would bend you over the organ bench in the back of the chapel.
My district allowed corporal punishment in theory. Nobody I knew was ever subjected to it and even the teachers said it was an anachronism. I once asked my high school vice-principal about it and said there “wasn’t any chance in heck” he ever take the risk of hitting a student. Class of 2003.
Yes. In Grade school and Junior High in the 1980’s in south Florida. I never got paddled, but I did have a friend who got it quite a lot. We were required to travel in pairs for this for some reason and I always volunteered to go along to the office. (I was bored a lot as a kid) In 8th grade, right before winter break, my friend decided he was too old for that sort of thing and got into a fist fight with the principle. He got expelled, and they did away with the paddle, mostly because he got the better of the administrator with it. 
I remember that fondly as one of the few highlights of a rather abysmal three years of junior high.
No. I went to 4 elementary schools in MA & NH during the 80s and none of them allowed teachers to lay a hand on you.
At my school (a Catholic School in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA) the principal once paddled a kid over the PA system. I don’t know if it was intentional or not. We’re sitting in class and we here “click whack! Aaaaagghhh! whack! Aaaaagghhh!”, etc.
Everyone (except the poor kid being paddled) thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard.
However, that was the last I heard of anyone being paddled at my school, possibly due to parental complaints…
Catholic school, Dominican Rep., mid-70s through mid-80s. Yes. Behold the power of the wooden ruler!
I was never hit, it was always the boys. The girls got sent to the principal’s office and get detention.
Surely not, I don’t think the school would ever recover from the lawsuits, if whoever did it wasn’t murdered first. It’s been explicitly prohibited since 1975, and before that, it was generally held to fall under a more generic “cruelty to children” law, so it’s been illegal for a long time now.
Private schools, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t imagine they’re exempt, and I can’t find anything online that suggests otherwise.
Yes, Baptist private school 75-82. We girls got hit as much as the boys, only by the female assistant principal instead of the male principal. She assumed kind of a baseball stance and had us bend over with hands on what seemed to be a special beating bench in her office.
My father was a carpenter and used to keep the school well-supplied with wooden paddles. Thanks Dad!
Yes. Teachers used a leather strap on students’ hands: one stroke for minor infringements and “six of the best” for really bad behaviour.