I am from Logansport, LA and some of my family is from Carthage. I guess we grew up in the Ass-Beatin’ central part of the country. I never realized it was so concentrated but that type of thing doesn’t rank in my Top 100 worst things in my life.
Indeed, at least they don’t have Administrative Punishment in public schools :eek:
I got paddled a couple of times in the 80s as well. I barely remember it–I can’t say it was effective, but it wasn’t harmful either.
I think the whole anti-spanking thing is a little bit silly. I think people, including children, have a general sense of what level and types of punishments are considered appropriate by society for most infractions. Children at either end of the punishment bell curve for a given culture are or soon become aware of it, and react badly to the idea that their parents/guardians don’t care enough to punish appropriately. (“Lax” parents often make up for this through increased communication.) This is why studies always show that children who are spanked more than average have worse than average outcomes, while studies of occasional spankers show no significant effect compared to similar non-spankers. It is deviation from the norm, not absolute level of punishment that has the greatest effect. (Obviously certain levels of violence have negative effects regardless of societal norms.)
On the other hand, there isn’t much (or any) evidence that spanking is beneficial, and it does have serious potential for abuse (as does any situation in which adults have nearly unlimited power over children). So I don’t think anti-spanking hysteria is a bad thing, even if it is overblown. And I think our society has become much more aware of various forms of psychological as well as physical abuse, which is a very good thing indeed.
/Hijack
Come on, guys…who ever figured Jefferson, Beckville, Carthage, and Logansport would ever be mentioned together on the SDMB? Add in Tatum and we might as well call it the district.
I can only speak, as others have, from personal experience, but the choice between licks and detention/community service was always an easy one. Yeah, the licks were going to hurt (and you might slip a tear or two…even in anticipation) but you knew certain things:
- The principal was probably going to respect your choice to take licks and possibly go easier on you;
- You saved face in front of your friends;
- In most cases, taking licks required no parental notification, so your parents never had to know, did they? And;
- YOU GOT TO SIGN THE PADDLE!
I know it’s a touchy issue, but I’m one of the ones who grew up with Ass-Beatin’s of the East Texas passionate type, and I thought it worked out pretty well. It certainly acted as a deterrent as far as I was concerned. And, to go out on a limb, the detention/CS was the “easy way out” anyway. We avoided it because of the boredom; 3 hours after school to “think about what we did” and become remorseful? Puh-leeze. But having to make that mighty decision to take licks, and knowing with each and every swat exactly what you did, made a cat remorseful.
What the hell? There’s no punishment here as far as I can see. In fact, it looks to me almost like a perverse kind of reward. You are rewarded by being given an opportunity to prove yourself to others.
Of course, I do think it can be part of a valid punishment that one be given the opportunity to prove to others that, despite his infraction, he can now be admitted into full interaction with the group again. But displaying the ability to take a paddling doesn’t have anything to do with reconciliation to the group in any meaningful or useful sense. (I mean, the group can just decide to allow it to symbolize such a reconciliation, but that doesn’t seem to me to be a very useful or meaningful thing for a group to do.)
-FrL-
That’s really weird.
I certainly wouldn’t call licks a reward.
I see what you’re saying, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like it was more rewarding to take the swats. It was very concrete, something even my noodle brain could accept: I did X, I took Y licks, now let’s get on with why I’m here.
The one thing I recall over and over again is how licks worked as a deterrent. I can’t count the number of times I said or heard: “Uh-uh, I’m not taking 3 licks for that!” We knew how many licks each offense merited, little criminals that we were. 
The other punishments (save suspention) just never really carried the same amount of weight, or dread.
But, even with corporal punishment, there were times we just couldn’t stand it, and had to keep talking in class. If the joke was good enough…you just had to choose your battles.
It is a pretty well laid out set of rituals that may sound strange from the outside but actually creates a good time for all. In the area we are discussing, virtually all teachers had paddles although some never used them or, if the teacher was female, they might refer paddling to a male if the student was a larger male.
Shop teachers often made the paddles for teachers although it wasn’t uncommon for former students to give them as gifts.
Here is what made paddles customized:
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Size and weight
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Holes drilled into it or not. Students always talked about the hole pattern in a paddle and whether that would contribute to extra pain (bear in mind that none of them ever hurt that badly. It was the anticipation).
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Suitable design for signing. Signing the paddle was a rite of passage and when the teachers would leave the paddle in plain sight, we would all study them to see the signatures. An experienced teacher would usually have a paddle that showed a “who’s who” of students and it would be mostly covered with signatures.
Some teachers had paddles with a scary name. Mr. Knight had his “Long Board” and he would often make reference to it. The only students I ever saw get truly hurt were football players that did something so bad that they got sent to the football coach for an after schhol paddling. I heard that was the worst of all possible punishments for several reasons.
All in all, the effect was more comedic than anything although the point was to be embarassing rather than physically harmful. Of all the reprimands that bI have experienced in my life, corporal punishment would have to rank about dead last on the offensive and hassle scale. I would love to instutute such a thing in my present world just so we could acknowledge things went wrong and move on.
It is a first for me as well. Let’s not forget Center, TX where my father lives. I love the area even though I moved far, far away. I learned a long time ago to just not mention what happened when I was growing up. People from elsewhere tend to think it is weird even though I choose to think I turned out OK. You would think that the people of East Texas/Northwestern Lousiana would be taxing the SDMB to death but there nmust be something wrong with the lines there. I am glad to see that some got through.
I’ve never been to a school that allowed corporal punishment. I doubt I ever will. In Northern Virginia, that is.
I’ve got to be missing something here.
You say the goal is to be able to acknowledge things went wrong and move on.
So, why do you need a paddle for that?
-FrL-
Oh, Shagnasty, in 3rd grade Mrs. Lovely displayed “Big Daddy Cane” behind her desk. Biggest paddle in the school.
Frylock, I suppose the key to the paddle was its rapidity. It was the fastest way to pay one’s toll to the little societal unit and get back with the program.
It’s like here in town, if I get a ticket, I can either A) pay a fine, which directly affects my bank account, but is over faster; or B) “sit it out” in jail for one day per $100 of the fine. Sitting it out doesn’t affect the bank account at all, plus you get 3 hots and a cot, but takes longer. That’s the best analogy I can come up with. The punishment will be there, but it’s up to you how you want to take it: grit your teeth for 10 seconds, or sit in sheer boredom over a longer period of time.
I don’t have children, so I can’t say whether I’d want them spanked at school or not. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that, if I could, I wouldn’t change the way I came up.
Paddling is very rapid and its over when it is over. I never saw a teacher hold a grudge after the fact.
“You have interrupted class 7 times this week!”
Whack
“Ok class, now were we?”
Every other form of punishment gets drawn out with parents being notified, staying after school etc. I am just saying that corporal punishment has one very valuable trait psychologically speaking and that is that it immediately follows the offending action (usually) and then it is done. The only other punishments that I can think of that meet the same criteria would be immediate work detail. Gym coaches and the military use physical exertion as punishment which is basically the same thing.
Louisa May Alcott’s father started a school where, if a kid was bad, they got to spank the teacher. That was supposed to teach them something, I think it was to install a sense of shame into them.
Here’s something weird. In the late 70’s/early 80’s, I got paddled by my principal for fighting, I believe. Wasn’t a big deal at the time.
Now my boss is friends with my former principal and we hang out at trade shows and such. It’s very weird having a beer with a dude that paddled you. I don’t know if he remembers, I’ve never brought it up!
Interesting. I’d thought corporal punishment was banned in all public schools, but apparently not.
This site has a map showing where corporal punishment is still used in the public schools, and a list of relevant statutes.