Big question - did ALL parents trust ALL the teachers that much?
Was their ever an incident when a teacher was brought up for being abusive?
Was their ever a teacher threatened by either personal injury or lawsuit if they touched someones kid?
I graduated high school in 1979, and lived in the Nashville, Tennessee area. The teachers would deliver corporal punishment on occasion, via wooden paddle. I never got spanked, though.
I don’t think we did, I never saw corporal punishment applied (1940-50s, small town Midwest). But we had the rest of the chain of command. We had private tutoring, major disruptions and general disorder, and were taught colonels of truth.
I was paddled in 1985 by my fifth grade teacher. I will never, ever be a fan of corporal punishment. All it did to me was humiliate me and shame me and make me hate school, which up until then I loved school and loved going every day and loved learning.
Maybe the crazy little shits are helped by paddling, but I highly doubt that, too. We had a troublemaker in class who got paddled every week…don’t think it was helping him, especially as he just laughed like a loon. And like I said, it was just humiliating for me and made me never want to go back.
Oh, and my mother most definitely did not back up the verdict. She was furious that someone else would dare to lay a hand on me, and trust me I was not spoiled - she just didn’t think it was the right of a stranger to beat me. After all, she brought me here from India, where the teachers consider it their God-given right to beat the kids in their charge.
According to the old joke, there are no dwarf nuns. Maybe the good sister was a penguin!
Anderson, Indiana public schools mid-1950s to HS class of 1967.
At Shadeland Elementary (K-6) kids were sent to Principal Sluder’s office for punishment.
School legend said he had a paddling machine in there. It wasn’t true. I saw him dealing with one little girl; she wouldn’t hold still, so he hoisted her up by one arm while he whacked her bottom with a ping-pong paddle.
At Central Junior High (7-9) teachers did there own paddling, and most of them didn’t paddle at all. The bad kid was taken out into the hallway for privacy when getting paddled, 4-10 strokes.
At Anderson High School, violators were sent to the Dean of Boys, or Girls. Dean Belangee used a fraternity paddle. He didn’t deliver very many whacks per boy, but he was a big man with a golf-like swing, delivered on the up stroke. Three was plenty, they said. I never heard about the Dean of Girls.
I think part of the frustration with CP is it was basically boy only so it taught sexism early on. I remember we boys noticed it very quick that the girls were little “teachers pets” and didnt get the discipline even when they were being just as bad as we were.
I went to Our Savior Lutheran School in the Bronx circa 1960. I was in the fifth grade. Got paddled several times. The procedure was to take you to the back of the chapel, bend you over the organ bench and hit you with a paddle that was a large bread board with a taped handle. The teacher in question (Mr. Irving, you prick) really wound up and let go.
I realize this is a zombie thread, but c’mon. I’ve seen this before. “I was so well behaved because I was afraid of my parents” - gah.
The people I have known who were hesitant to discipline (a word that means “teach”, not “leave visible injuries”) their children because they were afraid of CPS had plenty of other, unrelated reasons to fear CPS, like having drug dealers living with them.
What if the person who got told on had done something to justify it?
I also think that part of the reason it was abolished was because there were enough teachers who enjoyed doing it, not just because they were mean, but for sexual reasons too. I’m sure there have been plenty of instances where kids were singled out because they were the wrong skin color, had the wrong last name, lived in the wrong neighborhood, etc.
Yeah when certain parents have clout thru connections on the school board or the community, you can bet they were left alone. Also teachers quickly learned what kids parents would and would not allow it.
High School. Early 70’s. Shop teacher was a big bull of a man, 6 foot plus, missing the two middle fingers of his right hand. He would pick up miscreants by the neck with his big finger and pinky, and pin you to the wall off the ground or on your tippy toes. I assume, but don’t know for sure, that he also abused his kids (one in my grade) in some fashion. Guy was a total dick.
I would also like to think the end of CP also came about by the admission that it is a poor substitute for good teaching methods like actually engaging the students with interesting lessons that they want to do, plus good classroom management techniques. Basically more professionalism in the classroom. I remember one old time teacher told me he gave up the paddle when a former student admonished him to “lay on the oak” to his younger brother and he realized that all the efforts he had put into writing lesson plans, his lectures, his presentations, grading papers, all the lessons he had done from his chalkboard had been in vain. They only remembered his paddle. He didnt want to be remembered that way.
Those sadistic paddle wielding brutes of the old days, they really had very little formal teacher training. Nowadays teachers get 4-6 years of education with heavy mentoring.
I grew up in Oklahoma too, near the panhandle in a small town. From where do hail?
Graduated HS in 1980, we had corporal punishment through my senior year.
Bend over, grab your ankles… ouch ouch ouch.
grade school (Catholic) - yes. I got some raps with a ruler – everyone did.
high school (public) - no
ontario, canada, public school 1970’s once in 73, hand swats by vice principal in front of class, few more times 1978, ruler to hands and one time strap…it is all banned now and has been in public schools shortly after 78
No…went to a school in Ireland and from what I gathered from an old teacher who retired in 11th grade, it went in the late 60s.
Don’t be fooled though friends…just like African countries being ‘free’ from colonization at that time didn’t mean they were actually free is the same way that people students weren’t necessarily doing better.
The violence and agression from the hypermaculine teachers just shifted to verbal platform. Gendered slurs, threats of physical violence and detention, vulgar language…
Honestly, bringing this up reminds me how backwards Ireland still is.
Zombies only go to school for bbbbbrrrrraaaaaiiiiiinnnnnnnsssss!!!
Its still legal in Kansas. When I was a kid (70’s) it was still a threat.
Frankly it was often abused. I knew one man in college where he got it in jr. high. (80’s). he said what happened was to deal with problems in the lunch room they would idfentify all the kids causing trouble that lunch period and they would line them up for a swat. Well he got it once and he kept asking “what did I do?” and they had no answer. so basically it was just some person who thought he had done something wrong.
After working with schools quite frankly, I wouldnt trust many of the idiots teachers and principals to do this. I would rather be informed of problems.
Now I know one Christian school in Olathe that still uses it. However their are many steps that happen beforehand;
- Teacher must document the problem.
- Parent must be called.
- Teacher must use alternative forms to deal with the issue.
- Parents must be called in for a conference.
- When it happens, parents must be called and be allowed to witness it.