Come to the office to be paddled!
You can’t say no, hitting students is allowed.
March 21, 2018
Teachers or any staff at a school should not be allowed to hit a student as a punishment, no matter how bad the student has acted. According to the Supreme Court, depending if your town allows it or not, teachers can use corporal punishment on students.
In 1977 at Drew Junior High School in Miami, 14-year-old James Ingraham was accused of being rowdy in the auditorium and the principal hit him five times with a paddle. Ingraham told the principal he hadn’t done anything wrong, so the principal proceeded to give him 20 swats with a paddle according to “10 Supreme Court Cases Every Teen Should Know” by Tom Jacobs.
Corporal punishment was allowed in the school as it still is now but Ingraham and his mother sued the principal and other school officials claiming the paddling violated Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishments.”James suffered bruises that kept him out of school for ten days and he had to seek medical attention when the principal that him wasn’t even 100 percent sure that he had the right kid.
The eighth amendment was designed to protect convicted criminals from excessive punishment at the hands of the government, not school children who misbehave. The Supreme Court ruled against James saying that reasonable physical discipline at school doesn’t violate the constitution.
Today, 31 states currently have corporal punishment banned. If something like this happened today, technically it wouldn’t be illegal because Florida is one of the states that doesn’t have corporal punishment in schools banned.
Since 20 states still allow corporal punishment in schools, it is legal to be hit as a form of punishment and there’s nothing that can be do about it. Some may argue that if students are physically hurt as a punishment, they won’t do it again. No. No student should ever be hit in school no matter what.
Photo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3vHQrOppo
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James Doren • Dec 23, 2019 at 9:16 am
This is an interesting article. I see that it is a bit dated, and I’m not sure how I got here, nevertheless, the subject is still quite relevant. Please, bear in mind that I am seventy years old and so my opinions may be old fashioned by today’s standards. I grew up and attended grade school and high school in Maryland during the nineteen fifties and sixties, and to be truthful, our culture here in America has changed a lot since then. We didn’t have what is being called ‘Social Media,’ then.
There is bound to be controversy surrounding anything that conjures as much emotion as paddling, and there will probably be situations that arise like the one that is described here involving 14 year old James Ingraham.
It appears that the situation arose quickly and escalated. There is no mention of any sort of discussion before he was given 20 swats! I must say that 20 swats was probably over and above the maximum number allowed even in a deep southern state like Florida, and I am getting the impression that the event was totally out of hand at that point. Hopefully, those kind of happenings are few and far between, even in school districts that still allow paddling as a means of discipline.
In my home state, (Maryland,) paddling was not banned until 1993, but I only saw one example of it actually being done one time, and that was in third grade. The boy was indeed being very disruptive to the class and our teacher was patient to a point. But she was also an old fashioned farm girl from Iowa, and in that situation I think he had it coming to him. Other than that one occasion, I think that our teachers exercised a great deal of patience and restraint.
I have read articles that were written by folks who attended schools in the deep south, (where paddling is still practiced even today,) and they agreed that in most cases it was not the actual punishment that encouraged good behavior. rather, it was the knowledge, by everyone, that paddling was an option. I totally agree.
Even as a teen in junior high, I noticed that with no threat of serious consequences, some students would act up, and the faculty were at a disadvantage maintaining a learning environment. Any teacher will tell you that it doesn’t take a lot to disrupt a well planned lesson. The faculty began to seem more like babysitters than teachers.
I suppose what I am getting at, is that I agree with a policy where paddling is an option. It does not have to be abusive, however, no two people are the same, and so there is going to be debate and conflict regarding the actual administering of it. I suppose I have jabbered enough about this, and so, in parting, may I say that I wish for everyone at your school a wonderful day, and a good education. Jim Doren