I think my schools encouraged it. That is, until the kids got big enough to say, in effect, “Don’t even think about it.”
Kids got belted pretty regularly in grade school. Not so often in junior high. There were flat-out student-teacher fist fights in high school.
(I graduated high school in the early 70s, for a time frame reference.)
PS- I dare any teacher to try that shit with my son. Whoo, boy…
Texas, 1980s, yes. Though I never got it, I remember one day waiting outside my middle school’s vice-principal’s office for something (probably to get detention for one too many tardies) and a guy I knew was getting paddled inside. I think he got three swats, and it sounded painful, but when he came out he acted like it was nothing, of course.
Brooksville, Florida, 1979, Junior High. The principal paddled kids in a room that had a large window facing the hallway, so that anyone walking by could see. That year I had American History in a room directly across the hall from the paddling room, and the classrooms had a modern “open” design without doors. We got to sit in class and watch (and hear) kids get paddled every day. Good times!
Toronto catholic grade schools, k1-8. I only seen it done once and it seemed like it was resereved for heinous offenses and it was a thin leather like strap about 6 inches.
The one time I seen it done, they brought the guys mom into watch it being administered in front of us , then watching her (dimunitive little Italian Nona) drag him away by the ear for the rest of his sentence when he got home.
Declan
Wow, they did that number somewhere else besides West Goddamn? I’m both relieved and appalled to find this out. It was traditional – a young buck who’d got his butt smacked a lot during the year would make an even scarier paddle and give it to Miz Prunethorn or Miz Pusboil with a sort of rueful jokey affection. Rather than making the kid who was about to get a beat butt sign it first (damn. Shag, that’s the sickest wrinkle yet on this whole scenario!), kids would sign Teacher’s truncheon just before school let out for summer. The whole routine always seemed bizarre and a little perverse to me; it still does.
Your school district must’ve hired teachers who were either softhearted or weak-armed, then. Back in the hills of yonderyear, Ol’ Lady Twatsour and Missus Snakebritches and them swung that lumber hard, and it hurt! And they meant for it to hurt. And if the kid to be hit was known to have the sort of parents who, if you’d been whipped that day in school, always gave you an even worse whuppin’ of their own --tough shit, small fry, Miz Hornetfunker wouldn’t even think of not getting her licks in. I don’t recall there ever being any alternative punishments to getting your ass beat, either.
Hmmm, if you were in grade school in the 1960s, we’re either contemporaries or only miss being so by a couple-three years; so if where you were in school it was a rare big deal for a kid to get paddle-beat, it only goes to show that the part of the state where I was born and raised really is the most backward and benighted part of the state – freaking Webster county. Eight or ten kids got their rumps battered pretty much every day in our little 200-or-so-pupil schoolhouse. If one of the waspy ol’ gals who ruled the universe had bad cramps during Reading, or had fought with her husband that morning or was just pissed off at having spent five eight-hour days a week for nine months out of each of the last forty years on her feet in that same hot drab room that stank of chalkdust and unbathed kid, she had someone one-third her size and frightened half to death whose body she could take it out on.
First grade I got hit once by the teacher - we were lined up outside doing something and I started cuttin’ up some, and Miz Green whopped one open-palmed smack across my butt;; thaat one I admit I had coming. Second grade I was one of the prime specimens and never got punished. Third grade, though, was hell on earth Miz Ware -Mabel Ware was her name and I hate that ol’ bag still-was a mean twisted vicious headcase who always had a pet princess or two (little blonde pretty girlie-girls) and a few class scapegoats/punching bags, and guess which team I got drafted for literally from day one? That year I got ass whoopin’s something like twice a week, slapped across the face for allegedly sticking my tongue out at Queen Mabel (I didn’t, but wished I had), got yanked from my desk by the hair once, and got treated to some real creative mockery and verbal abuse. By a forty-something-year-old grown woman. I was an eight or nine year old sissy kid and short for my age!
Fourth grade was Miz Prine, who was a patient, sort of spaced out old gal who really had to be pushed before she hit anyone; I never felt up to it.
Fifth grade was Miz Thomas, a kid just out of Glenville Teachers’ College and not at all up for a classroom full of young heathens. I caught a few from her --anyone who was at all sassy or mutinous did because the poor lass simply could not maintain order or discipline in her classroom otherwise.
Sixth grade was Miz Howard, a classic old-school teacher lady who never hit a kid no matter what. She was perhaps the only sane, civilized teacher in that grade school, and I include my own mother (who never had me in her class, ever, thank you Satan for the mercy! She was mean and a little crazy when I was a kid, and I had my fill of her at home.
Seventh and eigth grades were the last years anyone got paddled really. In high school the option was there, like detention and suspension and getting expelled, as a weapon for keeping a bunch of hormonal hillbilly teenagers, really not far from a tribe of savages, in line. Maybe three paddlings took place in the four years I was in high school – always involving teachers who for some reason had a lot of trouble keeping discipline and order in class.
At least there weren’t any razor straps or canes involved, like some of the other posters are telling us.
England,sixties,the slipper across the backside and the ruler across the fingers in junior school.
There were two kinds of cane used in senior schools the thin whippy one which my school never had and the thick nonflexible one which as I recall we normally had one on each hand at the base of the fingers though one lad who kept mouthing off during the course of the punishment had six on each hand.
To build up the tension of the punishment we had to report to the punishment room(the deputy head teachers study)and be questioned a second time about our offence before getting our dues.
The effect was a sort of sick shock on top of the pain and we used to go to the toilets for about twenty minutes with our hands clenched tightly between our legs to lessen the agony.
I was only ever given the cane wrongly once which I think was realised but never admitted and thereafter rather bemusedly was given litterpicking in the quad after school for caneable offences.
Neither I or my copartner in crime made the connection until years afterwards.
Yes, from kindergarten to high school, 1974-1987. I never got swatted though.
Some teachers had their own wooden paddles, mostly the male teachers, but the principle was called upon if needed.
I had a fifth grade teacher that threw erasers and chalk at people if he caught them talking in class. He also dumped your desk on the floor if you failed to clean it out on Friday.
I’m amazed that any public school teacher in the U.S. would even try corporal punishment from the 70s on. That’s like something from TV. It seems to me like a big invitation for a lawsuit. The worst punishments I ever had were to sit in the office in elementary school (I can’t remember what for, but boring beyond belief), and a week suspension for making the French teacher in high school think a foreign agent was trying to poison his coffee. (I never got so much homework done.)
1970s fee-paying school in Scotland - yes! Always the belt, or tawse, anything from 2 - 6 strokes, sometimes on both hands. Sometimes pupils would be punished more than once per class.
The earliest year I recall seeing a classmate belted would have been Primary 5, although that was quite rare. One of the form teachers in Primary 7 occasionally belted the whole class; there’d be a queue of boys waiting their turn…
Some teachers, you dreaded getting punished by because they aimed to make it hurt, others didn’t practice so much and you hardly minded!
My sister was a teacher until around 1980 - she used it, too.
42 of Florida’s 67 school districts still permit corporal punishment, but according to the FL Department of Education (warning: PDF!), only 29 districts used the measure during the last school year.
I remember when I was younger, and corporal punishment was still a reality in my district. It no longer is, but I can’t find when it was phased out.
Grade School–South Carolina-1980s
Yes. Early and often. For anything at all.
Jr. High to High School–West Virginia, late 80s early 90s
Still on the books, but a lot of paperwork/bureaucracy. Needed parental approval, 24 hour cooling off period., done by administrator, etc. Probably happened oncee a year when I was there.
After graduating, I remember seeing that the state of WV outlawed paddling ~92-93 ???
No ides whether it was allowed, but I was once acting up in a music class around age 6 or so and somehow the music teacher ended up dragging me out of the room by my hair. I was still smarting off, giving my best tickertape parade wave to the rest of the class, and she whalloped me in the head as hard as I’ve ever been hit.
I don’t remember much after that.
If it is allowed by law then there isn’t much to base a lawsuit on. Our school policy had an opt-out policy on corporal punishment. Parents had to take active measures to fill out paperwork to stop any corporal punishment on their children. None ever did that I recall. Like I said earlier, a flat paddle to the rear isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. The alternative would be a 1 day suspension or detention in exchange for each lick. No one wanted that almost everyone would opt for paddling.
I grew up in suburban South Charleston. The back hills of West Virginia (I guess most of the state) is a different world from where I lived then and where I live now.
Well, I believe it’s not allowed by California law, but since I don’t have the time to look it up, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve never, ever, ever witnessed a student being “paddled.” That’s like Tom Sawyer or something.
Yes. Las Vegas in the 70’s. It was paddles all the way. I can remember getting in a fight in sixth grade with a kid who ended up biting me. The principal took great joy in wacking both the kid that bit me and myself. He had a name painted on his paddle so I know he loved it. Corporal punishment was never really a deterent for me.
Catholic school, 60’s and early 70’s, sure thing. Ruler over the knuckles and slaps. I saw one nun slap a kid so hard his head bounced off the blackboard. Kneeling in the corner was also a favorite punishment.
And I have to mention this:
My Mom used to whack us with these too. The worst part was each of us kids got one every single ****ing year in our Easter basket and when the ball fell off the paddle immediately went into the replacement pile of disciplinary devices. And they actually wondered why we were not overjoyed with what the Easter Bunny gave us after the first couple of years. :smack: When we believed in the Easter Bunny we were 
, when we learned who actually left the Easter Baskets…
I grew up mostly in NY, on Long Island (dob=1974). our school didn’t have corporal punishment, and my Mom didn’t use it on me at home because of her own abusive upbringing. In 1984 though we lived in Austin Texas for half a year. They had “optional” CP - parents would have to sign a form either allowing or disallowing CP. My mom decided to disallow after talking with the mother of one of my friends - she told my mom that she had gave permission for CP thinking her son wasn’t the type to misbehave anyway. But then one day a bully hit her son. School policy was that for any fighting no matter how one sided, both parties were punished. So my friend got CP even though he was the injured party.
I vaguely remember getting corporal punishment forms at the beginning of the year for the first few years of elementary school. My mother always denied permission for it, and I don’t recall anyone I know ever getting corporal punishment.
This was in the NW suburbs of Chicago, in the mid to late 1970s.