Did your school still have corporal punishment?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Growing up in the 1970’s we not only had it at every school, the teachers were proud of it. They would openly threaten students with being “paddled” or even “whipped” by the principal. I witnessed kids up to and including 6th graders being spanked, and in 6th grade Mrs. Lagree would hit kids, at least once slapping one across the face with a wind-up “SMACK!” that set the kid off like a howler monkey being fed backwards through a wood chipper. In fourth grade our principal had not only paddles mounted on his wall, but a whip (I cannot confirm that they were ever actually used, or if they were there for intimidation).

I was never once hit, but I did have my arm wrenched badly by the aforementioned Mrs. Lagree, for the crime of talking in line in the cafeteria. She nearly lifted me off the floor by my arm, pulling it up and behind my back at the same time. I do not know what she did, but I was unable to use my arm for some time without pain, and to this day, almost age 50, my left arm sometimes flares with pain at that same location. But hey, talking in line in the cafeteria… :rolleyes:

102

1970’s Arkansas,. Yes the teachers would give mild spankings to the brats in elementary school.

The responsibility shifted to the coaches in junior high. Getting sent to the coaches office meant grabbing your ankles.

Licks were very rare in high school. Only the principal administered them in very special situations. They always offered to suspend you for a week instead. Licks at school were nothing like the ass whipping you’d get at home for getting suspended. Almost everybody choose a couple trivial licks from the principal.

103

It was banned in Ohio when I was in about the third grade. Nonetheless, there are still Ohio school districts that make no secret of the fact that they still use corporal punishment. I don’t know how they get away with it, but they do.

104

Only zombies got whacked.

Seriously, this has been a revelation to me. One thing I noticed is that a lot of the whacked went to religious or private schools. Many were in public schools too, but far fewer–it seems to me–than their numbers would suggest. Honestly, it is hard to think a less effective means of discipline. Unless you want the lesson to be that might makes right.

105

I graduated in 1983 – and up to that point at least, they DID paddle kids all the way through senior year. This was in northern Indiana. There was no in-school or out-of-school suspensions. Not an option. Instead, you got three stinging swats on the fanny with a paddle while bent over in the hall.

106

I graduated high school in 1988, in Springfield, Illinois. In elementary school, I remember exactly one instance of a kid getting the paddle (and no, it wasn’t me).

I don’t know if it was outlawed by the time I got to junior high, or if it just wasn’t practiced in Springfield Public Schools. But nevertheless, other than that one time, I never heard of anyone being physically punished in any of the public schools I attended.

107

Hell to the yes.

My parents sent me to a strict country boarding school in Germany for a couple years. This was in the early to mid 90s.

The last year me and my family lived there was in 96. I was 10, and got in trouble for a school prank. It was minor, involving a whoopee cushion.

I was marched to the headmistress’ office, where I was told to bend over onto her desk. The worst part was, she made me drop my jeans.

She whacked me on my butt for about 15 times, then gave me 5 more for “screaming too much”.

I freaking hated it. It still haunts me to this day.

108

Yep, UK in the mid 60s slapped on the bare legs.

109

Catholic grade school. Late 1960’s. Nuns. Any more questions?

A lay teacher (we think she was kicked out of nun school for being too sadistic - shudder) got so tired of whacking one kid that she would make him stand in the back of the room and hit himself with a ruler until she would tell him to stop.

110

Junior High School I went to, in Los Angeles, 1963-1966, did this. Almost every teacher (at least the male ones) had a wooden paddle hanging on the wall of the classroom.

Apparently it was already a rare and dying practice by that time. I never saw a paddling take place, and only rarely heard of one.

But it must have been a thriving practice at one time. All of the paddles were festooned with names and initials. Apparently, there was a tradition that once one got paddled, one got to carve one’s name or initials into the paddle.

111

This thread has been resurrected so many times it is a Frankenstein.

Anyhoo, I’ll bite. Mainly because I am still nursing hurt feelings about a spanking I got in the 4th grade in 1973. South Georgia. Got it for “talking to my neighbor”.

I was wearing a light blue cotton dotted swiss dress that my mother had made (I always recall what clothes I was wearing during any particular high or low in my life, just a wierdness), and I was marched up to the front of the class and paddled in front of everyone.

I was indignant, and I knew my dress was flying up and everybody could see my panties, plus it stung like wildfire.

I turned around and told that teacher, “That hurts!!”

She said, “GOOD! I want it to hurt!”

Another swat and I said again, “That really hurts!!”

And she continued, “It’s supposed to!”

I really don’t recall how many licks I got, but I know she gave me more because I kept telling her I had enough.

And I wasn’t protected by social standing, either. My father was on the School Board at the time and would later be Chairman.

In addition, me and the girl I was talking to (she didn’t get paddled) had to sit on the steps at recess and write 100 times “I will not talk when the the teacher is talking”. AND the girl I was talking to had brought suckers for she and I to have at recess, so we decided to enjoy them while we were writing. So we are sitting there, lolling our suckers around in our mouths, and the teacher comes by and snatches my sucker out of my mouth. Only mine. Other girl got to keep hers.

God, that woman had the temperament of a dog shitting tacks when it came to me. I never understood why she was so mean to me, and it perturbs me to this day. As I got older, I think maybe she didn’t like my father’s politics or something like that. Talking in class should be punished, but damn, that’s an awful lot of harshness for a minor offense.

And do you think I went home and told my parents? Oh Hell NO! I didn’t want double punishment.

Parents didn’t question the judgement of teachers back then. It was always just assumed you deserved it.

However, the worst whipping I ever got wasn’t at school. It was administered on my Grandmother’s front porch in the springtime with a vine from a bridal veil bush by her maid, Eva. Left huge welts up and down both legs. That vine was so green and snappy it would wrap around my leg and Eva would snatch it back and strip my skin along with it. It was a Saturday. I know this because I distinctly remember the next day was Sunday and I had to go to church with all those marks on my legs showing between the hem of my green gingham dress and my lacy socks and mary janes (I told you that thing I have about what I was wearing at certain times). The reaction of all the grown ups?

That’ll learn ya!

Nobody dared question Eva.

And you know I don’t feel nearly as traumatized about the switchin’ Eva gave me as I do about the one I got in school. I guess that is because I know Eva loved me and was just doing what she thought was right, and the teacher was acting out some nasty agenda of her own.

I also recall seeing paddles at school with names and initials on them. Some students, especially by the time we got to middle school wore it with pride as bragging rights.

Paddlings went on until I graduated in 1981. My high school was built of cinder blocks, and students in the classroom next to the principal’s office always got an earful of somebody getting whacked.

112

England in the 1970s. Corporal punishment was widely used. I went to Catholic school, the principle was a priest and he strode around the school with a big leather belt tucked in waistband looking for kids who were misbehaving. Saw him once make an example of a lad he caught lighting matches and throwing them around. He grabbed him by the collar marched him into a class, interrupting the teacher. Then made a speech about discipline and gave the kid several whacks on the backside. Then marched him to the next class through a connecting door and did the same again, then to the next and the next. The guy was an old school Irish priest and beating the kids seemed to be part of the job description.

I got hit on several occasions for minor stuff: making paper airplanes, that sort of thing. On a bad day a teacher might turn a lesson into an inquisition, sometimes everyone in the class got hit. Not all the teachers had this violent streak, some used wit and humour. Others threw chalk or developed their own style of punishment.

Here is a clip from a movie Kes, that dates from that time, that was pretty much the way school life was in working-class England. The kids in the school are from a mining community, they faced a working life in the coal mines or heavy industry. A macho world where it helped if you could take punishment.

Did this discipline have any positive effect? Not really. It legitimised violence and probably turned made the bad boys into a future wife-beaters and local hard men. Mostly it covered up the inadequacies of some very poor teachers.

This sort of thing died out sometime in the mid-1980s in the UK after some particularly bad cases of sadistic behaviour became national scandals. It was just as bad, if not worse at the top of the social tree in schools for the elite.

It is kind of interesting how the cessation of corporal punishment in schools about the same time was a widespread cultural change across many parts of the world.

I am sure academic papers have been written about this.