Texas School District Brings Back The Paddle

Well, there is nothing that can't be solved through a little bit of violence.

Senior Suspended For Skimpy Prom Dress

Of the 352 students who attended prom, 18 violated the policy (dress code, and rather then bar them from attending..), he said. Seventeen of them chose to be paddled, while DeRamus chose a three-day suspension, Holloday said.

http://www.wpbf.com/news/23025672/detail.html

How very sophisticated.

If it works with just one application, I wonder how much labor and resources it saves with lack of time wasted on discipline, referrals, phone calls home, suspensions, detentions and extra assignments.

Yup, if getting kids to absolutely love school doesn't work, threaten them with violence.

Oh wait, I forgot: paddling isn't legally considered an act of violence or torture. My bad.

Can't hit the wrong one.

Anybody who thinks a spanking is really violence probably hasn't been spanked themselves. Light and brief bruising on the most resilient hunk of soft tissue in your body is not really what I would call torture either. It's mildly painful and humiliating. Generally speaking I'm pretty anti violence myself, but I was spanked sometimes as a child and it never really did any harm - but, when you're young and mostly naive, it's a surprisingly effective psychological deterrent.

Either thinking back on my own childhood, or watching parents deal with children in public places as I get older I realize just how empty most parental threats are (send you to your room, take away your game, sit in the corner....) because the kids just don't care. Most parents don't follow through on these threats, and when they do it often turns out to be more of an inconvenience to the parent than the child, who just finds other ways to cause trouble or entertain themselves. It's more of a challenge than a punishment.

If spanking is necessary for a while during a child's development, while they are still in the process of really learning the consequences of their actions, there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

What's really wrong is not paying attention to whether your actions are actually having a notable positive effect on the child, or causing harm and/or not adjusting your discipline accordingly. Every child is different and discipline is not universal. Like most things we should be encouraging smart parenting and decision making, not just targeting one mild behavior out of fear.

Well, whatever, if it works and if the parents are behind it then more power to them. I remember my elementary school had paddling. I was never sent to the principal's office, but I remember the kids that were.

I suppose they have to have parental consent?
But I don't see a problem unless there is a child seriously acting out because of *other* home problems (reaction to physical abuse, etc).

Come on, humanity. Haven't we, as a race, moved beyond slapping eachothers' bottoms when we get annoyed?

"Those techniques 'encourage them to behave well in the future,' said report author Alice Farmer. Paddling 'makes students lose respect for their teachers.'"

Uh huh, yes. That totally makes sense. :S

"Rules about paddling vary from district to district, but typically only administrators, not teachers, can mete out the punishment, which is done in private."

I think a certain Texan city is going to encounter an increase of interruptions in class that originate from female students.

Honestly, I would enforce justice if anyone did that to me or one of my loved ones. And the answer might come with more than a paddle.

Dev should speak for himself.

hum... I wonder what would the user ~Emma have to say about this one. It was nice to read her point of view on the "Texas town shoots stray dogs" article last year. lol

Ah memories of my schooldays in Denton, Texas. Mr. Neal, my 5th grade teacher kept his paddle hanging on the wall behind him. It had been perforated so that there was less air resistance as it moved through the air. I was never on the receiving end myself, but paddlings were done in the hallway right outside the room with the door open so everyone could hear.

I'm gonna push for it in my local school too. Some of these little brats need a bit of humility and a bit of embarrassment to straighten them out. Today's children have no respect, and generally no adult (this means you!) to teach them how to behave.

This is transparently one of the worst freaking ideas I have ever heard of. There is already such an incredible discrepancy of power between student and administrative officials, this will do nothing to lessen that gap and nothing to straighten out any abuses of power.

This is nothing about 'teaching kids respect' and everything about endemic paternalism that makes it so that teachers think they have the right to inflict corporal punishment that doesn't even work.

Respect you Jaymez? If you can't get me to respect you without first beating me maybe you don't deserve my respect.

Hey if paddeling doesn't work we can move on to caning, then flogging, right through to beheading. Let's teach our young people to respect authority with violence. After all fear is a great motivator. May I also say that for all those that advocate spanking for kids they must also advocate similar physical punishment for adults. Run a stop sign and the cop that catches you can whack you with his nightstick. Seems fair to me.

Like it or not, it works. Only one student has been paddled since reinstatement of this policy, but behavior is "dramatically improved at Temple High School", according to a newspaper article I read today. Back-talking to teachers, disrespect towards teachers, cursing at other students and teachers, inappropriate attire, and other policy violations cause "collateral damage" in the form of other students learning to be interrupted, so I'm for it.

The Bible teaches us that naughty children should be killed (unless they laugh at a bald man, then they need to be torn apart by a bear). I'm surprised that this Texan district is only into paddling.

I would recommend paddling for adults too, since it is so wonderfully efficacious and so many commenters just salivate at the idea of children being paddled. Run a light or stop sign, bend over and be paddled by the cop. Speeding? That's a paddlin'. Using a check on the express lane at the grocer's? A paddlin'. That'll teach 'em.

For all of you that are making remarks about how paddling is violent and does not solve problems...YOU SHOULD BECOME TEACHERS...especially middle school teachers. I have looked at studies across the U.S. on detention and in school suspension. There are so many kids getting detention and ISS that the schools don't have the space to accommodate them. From a young age we need need to learn that there are consequences to our actions. Giving a time-out does little to nothing.

Paddling isn't violent morons.

Christ, what a bunch of crybabies. "If that doesn't work we'll move onto caning." Don't be an asshat. First, they have to have parents permission. Second, teachers DO NOT do it. Third, ever notice how the same troublemaking kids are always in detention and ISS? It's because that form of punishment does not work. Notice how this school says behavior problems are at a low and only had to paddle ONE kid? That's because this does work. Get off your high horse. We have created a society where kids live in a bubble with all the protection and walls we build up around them. Dammit I want paddling, I want cribs with sharp edges, I want toys that kids can choke on, I want lawn darts to make a come back, and most of all I want kids to be able to go outside for hours on end playing in the woods or parks without someone calling their parent irresponsible for allowing their kids some independence.

Back in the day this wasn't uncommon and kids kinda behaved more. Now we have the entitlement generation with hands-off parenting and this PC BS where we're supposed to love them, even if they're being bad, which, if you had no carrot and stick, just all carrot, how's that been working out for us? Hasn't, kids are all unruly snots and the parents are worse. This isn't violence, this is simply punishment, and sometimes punishment within reason works. The only bad part of this is the kids parents should be probably getting the paddling too.

It works indeed. And it works in Iraninan schools, too. So why not in th US?

I agree with KCanathema, Dev, Jaymez, Violet72,Brett, Colin and the Temple school district.

I see lack of respect for instructors and school staff by students, everyday. The few students that I know for a fact, who do recieve old fashioned discipline, are respectful.

Violet72, I am a teacher (grades 8-12) and I would never send any of my students to be paddled. Students who do something bad enough to be paddled usually are acting out because of some sort of difficulty in their life that we often don't know about and hitting them as a consequence just makes matters worse. They need the tools and resources to be able to deal with their problems.

My father was suspended from middle school back in the 40's because when the teacher tried to hit him over his knuckles with a ruler he flipped his hand over, caught the ruler, and cracked it in half. When he was sent to the principal's office to be paddled because of that, he walked out the front door instead. When his mother asked why he left school, he told her. She went to the principal's office, took the paddle, threw it out the second story window, and told him in broken English, "no one hit's my family".

Any teacher (or anyone else) ever hits one of my kids because of some infraction on school grounds -- well, they will have to deal me.

Gaining kids' respect and attention requires a good educator, not a paddle. Problems go away when children understand why they are being taught and are treated respectfully themselves.

The problem overall is the educational system, not the kids. I hated being locked up in a classroom 8 hours per day -- and mind you I was a great student who attended an Ivy League college and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. It is an unnatural existence for a 10 year old boy to be cooped up all day. But the history of education in America owes to a system that needed to create a working class in the late 19th century... thus the school bell (created so that kids would learn about factory bells).

The system is outmoded and broken. Paddles won't fix it.

preach it, brett!
having to deal with the interrupters in class k-12 is seriously disrupting to the students that *are* well behaved. the teachers i learned the most from were the ones that ran a tight ship and childish hijinks were curtailed right away. if the parents give their consent, and it's regulated- go for it.

Ever see a 9 year old boy get a paddling for refusing to do home work because the topic was racist. The kid kept trying to get away while the teach was hitting him and the teach broke his arm. I call it, brutality plain and simple. Parents paddle their kids and they get a visit from CPS, and the parent goes to jail for child abuse. What puts a teacher above that?

wow. "old fashioned discipline"? where are you people from, the middle ages? a teacher should be a leader. he should teach children the concept of right and wrong, not pain or no pain. somebody who can restore order mainly through force isn't a leader, he is tyrant. and a bad one at that.

why don't you maniacs simply hand out guns to everyone and get it over with? that way we'd have some discipline on the world, since some certain socially and ethically underdeveloped super nations simply would cease to exist.

I believe physical discipline and negative reinforcement, like many things in modern society, have been neatly compartmentalized into right and wrong categories by people who make vast over-generalizations about the issues in order to avoid difficult questions about the nature of parenting and authoritative order in society.

To say that spanking is always good is wrong. To say that spanking is always bad is also wrong. Both points are unrealistic as to how authority throughout life functions. I know, for myself, that the handful of occasions I was spanked as a young child were absolutely necessary, in that they played a roll in establishing, very clearly, who was in control in my household. But my parents didn't whack me every time I misbehaved either. It was seen as an absolute last resort, and my parents never spanked me past the age of about 6-7.

My dad always said if you couldn't reason with a kid past that age you had absolutely failed as a parent and were never going to hold a position of authority in your house. Although many of my friends and extended family thought my parents were strict, they were respected by everyone. As an adult of 26 years, many people have told me that my parents "obviously did something right" because I'm more respectful, polite, intelligent, and disciplined than my peer group. And yeah, spanking did play a role in that upbringing.

What the hell is wrong with Texas? I guess we shouldn't be surprised. This is the state that elected Bush Jr. to be governor.

Basically kicking the paddling teacher in the balls would be self defense.

Wow. I can't believe how many wussies are on here.

I got paddled in school. You know what I had at home? TWO loving parents. We were relatively well off, I wasn't abused, but I still acted up. Because I liked it. Got paddled once - my parents found out about it and I got spanked when I got home. Know what? I never acted up to that extent, either. And guess what else (which is going to come as a shock to all you pussies out there) - I was never arrested, never did drugs, never had a kid out of wedlock AND, I have a job that most people would KILL for.

Here's a comparative study for you. I have a cousin with two kids that doesn't believe in spanking, and a cousin with three kids that does. No-spanking cousin has the most ILL BEHAVED KIDS on the face of the planet. I went to a family function this weekend and was MORTIFIED at the behavior of the non-spanked kids. The spanked kids actually commented to the adults how "only bad boys act like that". The spanked kids knew how to act in public and were able to recognize that their own cousins were acting like a bunch of monkeys.

This all goes back to the pussification of the world. Nobody can fail, nobody can get their feelings hurt, nobody can pay for their actions, and nobody ever deals with consequences. That's cool though. Because my kids will be running fortune 500 companies while YOUR kids are in "indie" bands milking off mom and dad until they're 36.

Amy22 Wow thanks, that was deep. ugh... please don't reproduce.

If spanking was brought back into all schools and also allowed at home our youth would learn to accept reactions to their actions. Now, I am not talking abuse here, I am talking about a spanking administered to the correct area. I was abused as a child. My foster mother didn't care where her belt, switches, or cat-of-nine-tails hit you. My sisters, and brothers would sometimes take weeks to heal over such beatings. As much as I have loathed the woman for beatings, I am grateful to her for teaching me some good lessons in life.

When I read in the paper, or see on tv a child of 6 or seven commiting crimes that were just unheard of in our day is appalling. Parents, and teachers rights have been taken away leaving us that do have some children that time-out, grounding doesn't seem to work, nothing to back us up. Yet, with that right taken away when a small, child and even young teens get in trouble with the law, they get tried as adults, now that I think is a worse injustice to the youth than suffering a spanking in school or at home.

The problem with all good ideas is that a few individuals abuse their power. I am not opposed to paddling when used properly. I think it would be better to transfer students who deserve a paddling to a school specifically set up for unruly students. At this school they should use a paddle. This removes those who are disruptive; the education of the majority who want an education would be strengthened. The learning environment would improve dramatically allowing teachers to teach instead of babysitting. Permit those who are transferred the right to prove that they deserve to be reinstated at a regular school after a specified time period.

Many kids have quickly figured out they can be disruptive, rude, profane, even injurious in school and liberal "don't hurt their fragile self-esteem" policies actually empower them. They can lie about their actions, yell "abuse," even call the police if a teacher tries to correct them. In these times of so-called "heightened awareness," schools and absent-minded litigious parents have badly missed the point that students actually want clear boundaries and easily understood standards as simple as "if you do this, THIS will happen, immediately." Paddling backs up the policy with action that can't be confused nor misinterpreted. Coupled with clear, consistently applied policies on behavior, paddling is a very effective correction, especially for a student who refuses to reason for himself and correct his own bad behavior. Schools are not helping such kids by dismissing it, actually perpetuating it, by relying on today's psychobabble to have any effect in moderating truly bad behavior in kids. Nonsense. They are reaping what they have allowed to be sown.