Last March an Arkansas mother posted that her 17 year old son was spanked by his principal for walking out of class to protest gun violence. Her son, along with two other students, were given the choice of getting struck with a wooden paddle or two days of in-school-suspension, and they all chose the first option. This sparked outrage on social media, given that most people do not know that paddling still exists in USA schools.
While corporal punishment is banned at schools in 128 countries, 19 USA states and over 4,000 schools still allow school administrators to assault students with wooden paddles, and the practice is so much more widespread than one may think. Each year tens of thousands American students are given the choice of getting struck with a paddle in lieu of another type of punishment such as detention or in-school-suspension, but there are plenty of schools that do not give students an alternative option to a paddling.
Corporal punishment usually consists of three “swats” or “licks” with a wooden paddle but it is not uncommon for schools to give anywhere between 3-10 swats, as stated in these 2018-19 high school student handbooks. Students are usually required to bend over a desk or grab their ankles so the principal or teacher can inflict pain on their backsides with a large piece of wood. Students are frequently left sore in addition to sometimes being bruised and marked afterwards. Often times the paddle “swats” do not happen right away so students sometimes have to wait days for their corporal punishment to be carried out.
“Swats” are given for many small offenses such as being tardy to school, and are not necessarily used for only serious infractions. As alluded to in hundreds of more tweets below, some high school students have been paddled for offenses such as eating a cracker in class, while in 2015 this senior student tweeted she was spanked just for leaving a drink on her desk.
In many high schools male principals & teachers are legally allowed to physically assault female students with a paddle and vice-versa. In this 2009 clip of the TruTv series The Principal’s Office a female student is paddled by her male principal after arriving late to school.
Several public high schools even punish students by spreading their paddlings out over several days. Eldorado High School in Eldorado, Texas states in their 2018-2019 handbook that once students are tardy to school for a sixth time they can choose to be spanked for five straight days (two swats per day: 10 total) as an alternative to five days of in-school suspension. Similarly, Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, Texas gives students the option of being beaten with a paddle for three consecutive days as part of their 2018-2019 campus discipline plan.
Over the last few years several high school students have tweeted they have paddled for three consecutive days as part of their punishment, including a student who tweeted he was going to receive 9 swats over a 3 days period in March 2015. In January 2015, a student also received swats for three consecutive days for being late to school, and she tweeted how she cried on the second day of getting them. Another student also tweeted how she cried during her three straights days of being paddled for repeated tardiness in April of 2015.
Many high school students are also victims of paddlings countless times throughout each school year. In 2015 a student tweeted that she received swats “millions of times” by her principal that year, and a list of her tweets referencing her “swats” can be viewed here. In 2013 another student tweeted that he received “105 total licks” with the paddle by his principal during the previous school year, and a list of his tweets can be viewed here.
Several students who get paddled each year are also at least 18 years old and of legal age. In 2014, a 18 year old student tweeted she was paddled and noted “it hurt like hell but all I could do was laugh at how ridiculous it is to paddle an 18 year old girl as a form of punishment.”
In 2004, one paddling case of an 18-year old student prompted a federal lawsuit. In Serafin v. School of Excellence in Education, former high school student Jessica Serafin stated her male principal paddled her without her consent after she was caught leaving school to buy breakfast in June 2014. Serafin was 18 at the time, and when her principal informed her she would be paddled for leaving campus Serafin refused to accept her punishment, and was restrained by two school employees while her principal began beating her with a paddle. Sefrain tried to block one of the blows, causing her hand to be smashed by the paddle. According to court papers the paddling left her buttocks bleeding and her hand swollen, and she was treated at an emergency room. However, Serafin lost the case against her school and the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal a few years later, citing that the school followed their discipline policy.
There have been countless of other cases of students requiring medical attention after getting spanked by their school administrators. Last fall, a fifth-grade student was left so bruised by his paddling that his mother noticed him limping up the stairs when he got home from school. And in July 2013, a student tweeted how her male principal injured her wrist and thumb after she tried to block one of the swats during a paddling the previous year.
On average, one child is hit in pubic schools every 30 seconds somewhere in the United States and in 2017 researchers estimated that 589 students were paddled nationwide every day. In the state of Alabama, more than than 20,000 students were paddled during the 2015-2016 school year, according to this recent article. And 102 of Alabama’s 137 public school systems used paddling during this same school year.
The United States is just one of 69 countries where school corporal punishment is still legally permitted, joining countries such as Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia who have also yet to abolish the practice.
Corporal punishment is illegal in 31 states in America, meaning that school administrators would be jailed on criminal assault and child abuse charges if they ever paddled a student in these states.
Just last month, Tennessee passed a bill banning the paddling of students with disabilities, after a recent report showed that disabled students were paddled at a much higher rate than their peers. However, there is currently no legislation in the works to ban the paddling of all students in this state. In 2017 Louisiana also passed a bill banning the paddling of disabled students, but a bill to ban corporal punishment of all students was overwhelmingly rejected by the state House.
Below are hundreds of more tweets from American high school students who have been victims of corporal punishment by their school administrators in the 21st century.
https://twitter.com/currycates/status/578233583195799553
https://twitter.com/saratoninnnn/status/443409665469448192
Shocking Tweets From USA High School Students Reveal They Are Still Being Paddled at School 