School Spankings: Minorities Get More
AP, August 20, 2008
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Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2007—and black children, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.
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In its study, which was being released Wednesday, the group Human Rights Watch used Education Department data to show that, while paddling has been declining, racial disparity persists. Researchers also interviewed students, parents and school personnel in Texas and Mississippi, states that account for 40 percent of kids who were paddled in the 2007 school year.
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Legal immunity
Widespread paddling can make it unlikely that forms will be checked. A teacher interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Tiffany Bartlett, said that in her Austin, Texas, school, the policy was to lock the classroom doors when the bell rang, leaving stragglers to be paddled by an administrator patrolling the hallways.
And even if schools make a mistake, they are unlikely to face lawsuits. In places where corporal punishment is allowed, teachers and principals generally have legal immunity from assault laws, the study said.
{snip}
A majority of states have outlawed it, but corporal punishment remains widespread across the South. Behind Texas and Mississippi were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri.
Facing the paddle
African American students are more than twice as likely to be paddled. The disparity persists even in places with large black populations, the study found. Similarly, Native Americans were more than twice as likely to be paddled, the study found.
The study also found:
# In states where paddling is most common, black girls were paddled more than twice as often as white girls.
# Boys are three times as likely to be paddled as girls.
# Special education kids were more likely to be paddled.
More than 100 countries worldwide have banned paddling in schools, including all of Europe, Farmer said. “International human rights law puts a pretty strong prohibition on corporal punishment,” she said.
{snip}
It’s not an easy choice. In many schools, kids can avoid a paddling if they accept suspension or detention, or for younger kids, if they skip recess. But often, a child opts for the short-term sting of the paddle.
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: Human Rights Watch’s report “A Violent Education Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools” can be read on-line or downloaded here.]
(Posted on August 20, 2008)
Comments
Did anybody stop to think maybe the uncivilized little brats NEED more spankings?
Posted by at 6:57 PM on August 20
This does not surprise me at all. I am a 63 year old Black woman. I attended an all Black segregated elementary public school in New York during the early 1950s.
Our public school had three principals - all White men. I remember one of the principals as being violent and mean as he could be to children. It was not unusual for him to grab children, especially the little boys and shake them so hard that they would be screaming either out of pain or fear. In hindsight, I would say that he was about 6’2, 210lbs. He was a big man.
The majority of us lived in contant terror of him. For me , things got so bad that I would sometimes urinate in my clothes whenenver I saw him walking down the hall or coming into the school cafeteria. When I was able to leave the school after 4th grade I was so relieved. Tha man literally terrified me!
Decades later and now a grandmother, I frequently wondered if this man would have been so violent toward a group of White children, especially White upscale children. Such behavior was child abuse.
Given the fact that we were lower income and poor Black children of the pre-modern civil rights era, he probably knew that he could treat us pretty much any way he desired and there would be no repercussions.
It seems that the mistreatment of Black and other non-White children is still continuing today.
Posted by Yvonne at 7:09 PM on August 20
Maybe it’s because blacks and boys are more likely to do something naughty that necessitates a spanking.
As for this part about “special education students,” that doesn’t necessarily mean those who are clinically retarded. The bar for “special education” has been getting lower and lower, and schools are all too ready to classify students as “special” to get more Federal money. For instance, boys who act like boys get slapped with an ADHD diagnosis, doped on Ritalin, and classified as “special.”
Posted by Question Diversity at 8:11 PM on August 20
As someone who has great respect and reverance for our American Indian fathers who fought like hell to protect their homeland but lost I am disgusted that Africans always try to connect themselves to American Indians and/or Hispanics as if the they have anything in common with either. They don’t in my book. They are far more animalistic in their culture than any other tribe on earth. They are a discrace to the human race.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 8:28 PM on August 20
As someone who has great respect and reverance for our American Indian fathers who fought like hell to protect their homeland but lost I am disgusted that Africans always try to connect themselves to American Indians and/or Hispanics as if the they have anything in common with either. They don’t in my book. They are far more animalistic in their culture than any other tribe on earth. They are a discrace to the human race.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 8:32 PM on August 20
Sorry but I have to disagree that paddling, swats, licks are bad.
A story from the NE PA coal region in the 1970’s. When I was in sixth grade and worrying about starting junior high the next year, I heard some frightening stories about the 7th-grade life-science teacher who “beat students up”. I was told to look around the room on the first day of class for the cracks he had put in the blackboard with his fist (when his temper rose but not enough to direct it physically against a student). I also heard he was one fantastic science teacher.
This guy was able to successfully get working-class and poor kids, typically bringing in little knowledge of or curiosity about science (somewhat due to poor K-6 education, somewhat due to the rampant religious conservatism and superstitiousness in the area), to learn concepts from what was then college-level molecular biology. Yes, in 7th grade, we had ordinary folks’ kids talking in the hallways about purines and pyrimidines.
His first class on the first day of school set the tone for the rest of the year. No fists, no temper, but incredible intensity.
Taxonomical concepts e.g. protista (with cool little critters as examples), parthenogenesis, a bit of philosophy of science, religious agnosticism (and no, that didn’t bother us even though we mostly came from devout Catholic homes), lots more, all packed into that first day. How did it work? Silently threatening, behind Mr.D’s head, lay the infamous cracks in the blackboard, branching lightning-like, up front for all to see and beware.
Mr.D had served in the Air Force, flying over Yugoslavia, during WWII. (He would share with us his war stories, and we came out of that class being able to identify Tito and Mihajlovic as well as we did cellular structures.) He had been shot down, and his injury apparently killed some nerves in his strong hand, such that he could still use the hand but had little feeling in it. That’s how he could put the fist through the blackboard.
Mr.D seemed overall to be nicer to us than he did to the previous two or three years’ classes (he would “change his strategy” to throw students off guard, as one alumnus told me). From the previous year’s class, I heard an eyewitness story of what Mr.D did to a student who “jumped the gun” and left the room a few seconds before the final bell (students had to line up near the door if class finished before the bell). Mr. D’s classroom was at one of the ends of a U-shaped hallway. The student sensed that he had just done something dangerously wrong, panicked and started running along the “U”. No match for Mr.D., who had retained his Air Force physicality and muscles (sometimes part of his humor: the question came up of how a moon colony would be powered, and he answered under his breath, “D’s Muscles!”). The student was caught at the other end of the “U” and dragged by the collar back to the classroom. Mr.D pulled him up straight, then threw him to the ground and **stepped on him** (one foot, I assume) with a goodly amount of his >250 lbs. Then, yanking him up again, he pushed the guy’s books off a desktop onto the floor, yelling “Pick them up!”. The student did so. The books were pushed again. The student picked them up again. This repeated a number of times until Mr.D had enough.
This wasn’t as much of an intimidator as the stories we all heard, from multiple mostly-independent sources, that three years before my class, he had hung a student by the arms out the (third-floor) classroom window.
The “worst” I saw him do in my class was to add a few more lightning branches to the large crack in the main blackboard, plus kick a wastebasket to half its diameter.
The result: Students who otherwise would likely have ended up working in the garment factories or the bread bakeries, or as housewives, felt enough confidence to take high school biology seriously and become nurses, lab technicians, and even the occasional microbiology prof or pharmaceutical-company exec.
Their foundations for science learning and scientific thinking had been solidly built, by means of Mr.D’s setting up an atmosphere of indelible toughness.
I feel bad that PA has recently banned corporal punishment in schools. Though, I can see how a teacher less wise than Mr.D can
abuse the privilege. In the same building as the junior high, we had classes for slow learners and mildly retarded. The teacher would pick up and throw chairs at the kids once any of them showed some incorrigibility. He got fired for this (though the local citizens seemed more bothered by the reports of “odors of perspiration upon his person” than by the chair-throwing). Most of the teachers used the paddling privilege intelligently, with just enough actual paddling (plus lots of threats of same) to function as an effective deterrent.
No reason to believe either that paddling would encourage kids to use violence themselves. A teacher’s right to spank was considered a sacred right, inherent in the honored status of “teacher”. For a person not in authority to claim this privilege was a sacrilege. (Then again, this area of the country has its cultural and philosophical base in traditional Catholicism—maybe kids in nonreligious suburbia or center-city would respond differently.)
Posted by convairXF92 at 8:57 PM on August 20
If they did more of it than there would be less crime
Posted by at 9:09 PM on August 20
I’m all for spanking children in response to bad behavior. But with all the poor behavior I see out in public, I think the numbers are way too low.
Posted by GetBackJack at 9:46 PM on August 20
It is well worth the time to peruse the study itself. Human Rights Watch says in one place that there is no evidence that blaks misbehave more than whites. This implies that behavior is the same and that disparities in punishment are due to racism.
However, one reading further learns that the data on which the study was based simply do not contain information on behavior. In other words, Human Rights Watch is saying: “We don’t want to know.”
This astonishing lack of curiosity is not mere laziness; it is willful and intellectually dishonest. The study is not at all credible. It refutes itself.
Posted by GB at 9:57 PM on August 20
“This does not surprise me at all. I am a 63 year old Black woman. I attended an all Black segregated elementary public school in New York during the early 1950s.
Our public school had three principals - all White men. I remember one of the principals as being violent and mean as he could be to children. It was not unusual for him to grab children, especially the little boys and shake them so hard that they would be screaming either out of pain or fear. In hindsight, I would say that he was about 6’2, 210lbs. He was a big man.
The majority of us lived in contant terror of him…..”
Posted by Yvonne at 7:09 PM on August 20
I’m a 64 y/o White woman who went to Catholic school. Mother Superior could strike fear into the heart of the Devil!
Posted by at 10:20 PM on August 20
I think I have a solution, turn it into an object lesson. paddle students in direct proportion to their population percentage, and if that means paddling white kids just to “make quota”, so be it. If 13 blaqs get spanked on monday, spank 70 whites too, whether they did anything or not. It will shut-up the sharpton/jackson crowd, but more importantly, it will wake up whites and make them understand. we will have a whole new generation of whites who are acutely aware of AA and quotas
Posted by at 12:41 AM on August 21
“Given the fact that we were lower income and poor Black children of the pre-modern civil rights era, he probably knew that he could treat us pretty much any way he desired and there would be no repercussions.”
Yvonne, the operative word here is POOR. I grew up white and in a poor rural area, and principals, and the male teachers of the upper grades were all like that.
Posted by at 2:36 AM on August 21
Hmmm, as a survivor of child abuse, I’ve got to disagree with physical punishment. No, I don’t have any alternatives or new ideas; I just happen to know what it’s like to be beaten up routinely by someone who is, according to nature, supposed to protect me and ensure my survival. It messes you up.
Posted by Anglokraut at 3:08 AM on August 21
I grew up in south Georgia in the 60s before Brown vs Board was fully implemented . At the white school paddlings were given out in abundance . I got my share and had every one of them coming to me . The paddles were the two fisted kind , 2 1/2 to 3 feet long with holes drilled in them (no joking) . I thank my beautiful teachers for straightening out my skewed adolescent thinking .My only regret is that I was not a better student for them when I could’ve been . I graduated in ‘71 from a fully integrated , 87% black school .The black students ,who back then were basically good kids , ruled the school . The black teachers were largely helpless . It was plain to see that before integration, they had not been disciplined the way we were at the white school .Our tiny C class school , which had excelled in sports , academics and music became a 4A sludge pot overnight . 120 seniors in ‘71 , 15 of them white . Everything we had , that we were , our history , our culture , our people - blown away by the fierce wind of Brown vs Board .The complete destruction of one culture in an effort to elevate another culture .
Posted by at 3:14 AM on August 21
In other news, it has been revealed that girls are far more likely to get pregnant than boys. New laws are in the works to correct this disparity.
Yvonne, things have changed since you were a kid. These days, if black kids are punished more than white kids, it’s because they are far more likely to be trouble makers. Not because their white teacher/principle is a racist. Just as boys are more likely to be disruptive than girls, so too blacks are more likely to be disruptive than whites. It’s amazing that there are still people out there who don’t realize this. They must live in some kind of weird alternate universe.
Posted by jewamongyou at 11:52 AM on August 21
OK. But did the “researchers” try to perform causation analysis or correlation analysis? No. They took raw data and said, “see proof of racism”. Any Statistic 101 student should see the obvious flaw in this study. The “researchers” started out with a bias to reach a predetermined conclusion (it is a “Human Rights” org afterall that must justify their existence). For example, I could do a study that showed when my neighbor’s blinds are closed it is sunny outside and when open it is cloudy. Therefore, my neighbor controls the weather with their blinds. It is a silly conclusion because I did not try to understand the causation. You get the point.
My suppostion would be that many of the black paddlings occurred at majority black schools, probably mostly inner city. In those areas and schools, most students are from 1 parent homes with little to no discipline. Most likely the mother is on welfare, or rarely at home if she does work. So the child has little to no guidance in acceptable social behavior (like doing your homework, no running in the hallway, pushing others, bullying others, respect for authority, etc.). So it is inevitable that the child will most likely have dicspline problems. Further, most all black schools are very poor performers on the standardized tests required. Well below the state averages. A HS in my city was known for gang problems and poor perfromance. It was recently shut down and taken over by the state due to failure to meet minimum academic standards and even improvement year over year. This happened DESPITE the fact that the per pupil spending was 30% more at that school than other majority white schools in the city (due to adminsitrators demanding more $ to improve performance). Additionally, much of that sub par performance could be attributed to the lack of value placed on education by the students and parents, as well as the documented facts that the IQ of blacks on average is less than that of whites which leads to the student unable to comprehend the material which then leads to boredom and frustration which then leads to mischief.
Another important facet not mentioned is the correlation of the child’s grades to the frequency of disclpine and paddling issues. My guess is the majority of children that were paddled, performed poorly in their coursework. Those black kids that had good grades and applied themselves were much much less likely to be disciplined. I would say this was even heightned for black kids that attended a majority white campus since they were surrounded by kids who valued education (not all but the majority). It is not hard to see the lack of eductional value in a majority black school. Think of the times we have heard black students say to those trying to learn “you are just trying to be white”. Culture is an important factor in discpline.
In summary, these “researchers” are doing a dis-service to all children by publishing a report without doing their homework and simply yelling “racists”. First look at the compostion of the schood where the paddlings occurred (ie the culture of the student body). Second, look at the grades of those sutdents who were paddled. At a minimum, take these potential causations and do some correlation analysis. Otherwise, the report is absolutely bogus. As for paddling in itself, I think there is a place for it. It should be used sparingly but it is a useful deterrent in a stituation where the parent has little involvement in the childs life and sees discpline (like suspension) as a badge of honor.
Posted by at 12:36 PM on August 21
I find this whole thing to be totally bogus. School spankings stopped a long time ago because parents didn’t want to harm their little darlings self-esteem and of course, it was never their kids fault to begin with.
I find it extremely hard to believe that minorities receive more spankings than whites since minorities would be the first to hire some smuck lawyer and sue the school, the teacher, the principal, the school board and anybody else they could drag into the lawsuit.
Considering the state of our government schools, more paddlings would be a plus but it ain’t happening. This is just another attempt to victimize minorities and I’m so sick of it.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 1:11 PM on August 21
This is not surprising. Black people in their 20s that I know talk about the whuppin’s they got when they were kids, and it’s like nothing you hear from white people, at least white people who are not both over 60 and from the South or a blue collar background. Whites may think it’s abuse, but it’s just a normal part of black culture.
I read a book (titled “Honky”) by a white guy who went to an all black school in the ’70s. He said the black teachers spanked everybody there except him, because, as they said to his parents, white folks spoil their children. I guess they were being cultural sensitive by respecting our folkways.
Posted by c23 at 1:19 PM on August 21
I assume the reason for this is black teachers teach black students more often then not. I’d say at least once a week in a store or in a subway or some other public place I see some enraged black mother smacking the heck out of some screaming toddler.
Black women seem to have extreme anger control problems qite often, and the stress from trying to raise a large number of children with no fatherly support seems to push them over the edge. Smacking you children seems quite normal and necessary for them I think.
Posted by AJ at 1:24 PM on August 21
Hmmm, as a survivor of child abuse, I’ve got to disagree with physical punishment. No, I don’t have any alternatives or new ideas; I just happen to know what it’s like to be beaten up routinely by someone who is, according to nature, supposed to protect me and ensure my survival. It messes you up.
Posted by Anglokraut at 3:08 AM on August 21
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Anglokraut, my heart goes out to you as it does to all survivors of child abuse of any kind. However, SPANKING does NOT equal BEATING. They are two totally different types of actions with nothing in common. That said, I don’t think it is the place of the schools to be meting out corporal punishment to students who are not their own children. (Nobody should be physically correcting any child not their own, for that matter.) On the other hand, I think that some of these teachers may be at their wit’s end and in dire need of ANY sort of punishment or threat of punishment to try and keep order in a school gone berserk, with students whose behavior more closely resembles zoo animals than children.
Posted by at 1:25 PM on August 21
Several (4) studies have shown that spanking does not adversely affect black children but it does lead to later emotional harm and bad behavior for white children.
Hey,I’m just reporting what the studies have shown.
Posted by at 1:25 PM on August 21
I think anyone whose been in or associated with education and teachers has been aware for decades that black students disproportionally tend to be more disruptive and violent. Lots of reasons for this including that blacks physically mature sooner and black males have higher testosterone levels. In fact:
“Studies have found that the prevalence of conduct disorders is about twice as high among blacks as among whites. This is the case not only in the United States but also in Britain and the Netherlands. “
http://www.amren.com/ar/2002/07/
Posted by Odysseus at 2:52 PM on August 21
“Blacks and American Indians twice as likely as to be paddled as whites.”
It’s really a shame of great proportions that these people are too dim-witted to understand that if a particular group is getting disciplined more it’s because they misbehave more.
Complaining about the discipline non-whites receive only encourages them to act up even more.
Posted by ice at 6:42 PM on August 21
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This is not surprising. Black people in their 20s that I know talk about the whuppin’s they got when they were kids, and it’s like nothing you hear from white people, at least white people who are not both over 60 and from the South or a blue collar background——————- what you say is correct c23 .And there is probably a reason for it .During the Vietnam era North Eastern kids and left coast brats both had a penchant for burning the American flag , their draft cards , their campuses , even private property in the towns where their schools were located and flying NVA and VC flags. My bet is these kids were not disciplined very well .Interestingly enough these two areas were also the recipients of most of the tidalwave of immigration after WW2 that inundated America . And although I can’t prove it , I am betting that this is where we got most of our student activist from in the 60s . Because in the rural heartland and the South , the two areas least affected by post WW2 immigration , 60s activism was for the most part rarely seen .
Posted by at 7:02 PM on August 21
Perhaps for blacks and browns.school systems should begin an aggressive”time out”program to help the little darlings understand that there misbehaving is simply the resault of the evil white race being to demanding.Warning… During time out sessions all teachers should watch there wallets and purses,and be sure to wear a flack jacket.You reckon the good Rev. Wright of Obbama fame,was perhaps spanked lots by and evil white brother?Hmmm?
Posted by Brad at 9:22 PM on August 21
Given the fact that we were lower income and poor Black children of the pre-modern civil rights era, he probably knew that he could treat us pretty much any way he desired and there would be no repercussions.
It seems that the mistreatment of Black and other non-White children is still continuing today.
Posted by Yvonne at 7:09 PM on August 20
Well, my grandparents grew up in the 20s and 30s and my dad was a kid in the 50s. They grew up in the Midwest and they said they got paddled hard in school among other harsher punishments. it’s not a black or white thing.
Posted by at 10:17 PM on August 21
For once the ACLU and the human rights watch are correct. This should be outlawed. The USA should join the civilized world and ban it. The past generations went thru the Public Schools and were beaten into conformity. They also let all this widespread immigration happen. Don’t question those in authority. I believe we should. THIS PRACTICE IS WRONG. Paddles with holes is sadism. What is wrong woth people who think this is discipline? It is not.
Posted by Cat Thomas at 9:06 PM on August 23
“Boys are three times as likely to be paddled as girls”.
I picked this statement to illustrate the demented nature of some of the “human rights” groups. This along with the comparison between the rates of paddling received by black girls vs white girls, already indicates that it isn’t human rights that concerns these people. It is the usual monitoring by the politically correct crowd to see their inane policies are being carried out. It could obviously be that black girls are twice as rowdy as white girls. By the way, these groups are the same people who avidly work to set up abortion clinics around the world, regardless of the term the women is in.
Posted by Bobby at 3:09 AM on August 24