Human Rights Watch: US: End Beating of Children in Public Schools

[billyoc]

(Dallas, August 20, 2008) – More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.

In the 125-page report, “A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools,” the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of “paddling,” during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

“Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn’t stop bad behavior,” said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. “Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it.”

The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.


http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/19/usdom19655.htm

My God, even the nuns stopped beating us in the '60s. :wtf:

[stillcool]

1. just wait until the teachers are packing heat...

[Dorian Gray]

2. Seriously?

There is still corporal punishment in some states? I'm appalled!

[billyoc]

3. Twenty-one states, the report says.

[Dorian Gray]

10. That truly shocks me....

Amazing!

[cobalt1999]

4. Where I went to school, beating were intense and quickly delivered

"Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it.”

--- This I disagree with, it was a big deterrent for me and my friends and once beat, we rarely committed the same offense again.

That said, I wouldn't want my kids beat in school.

[Mr. Blonde]

13. I was going to say it didn't take long for

a good paddling to get me in line. And following that I did much better in school.

[Bill McBlueState]

14. "data" isn't the plural of "anecdote" n/t

[pnwmom]

15. The research evidence is that it doesn't work. Your own particular case

is anecdotal. My anecdotal evidence is this. When I was a child, I moved from a corporal punishment state to a state where it was banned. There was no difference in student behavior. Just in the out of control behavior of adults.

Note the states that still use it. They're not the high achieving states.

[gatorboy]

5. Not all the nuns, believe me.

[YOY]

8. Seconded

Some were sweet ladies. Some were nasty old gals who missed out on some deep d***ing in a vital portion of their lives and take out that bitterness on anyone around them.

[LiberalEsto]

6. New Jersey banned this more that 100 years ago

NJ was the first state -- and for many years the only state -- to prohibit corporal punishment in public schools. When we moved to Maryland with our kids 18 years ago, we were appalled to learn that they allowed it. It was rarely used in the 1990s, and was banned shortly thereafter.

As a product of NJ schools where corporal punishment was unthinkable, I am amazed that this barbarity is still practiced in the US.

[billyoc]

9. Ah, THAT's what it is. My parents got the shit kicked out of them in Catholic School

in the Bronx, but they moved down to Toms River before I started school, so I never did.

[LiberalEsto]

11. My husband went to Catholic Schools in NYC too

Nuns hit him with steel rulers. One time a priest punched him in the jaw. He detests the Catholic church.

[SheilaT]

7. Maybe we could institute

corporal punishment in the workplace. Yeah, that's the ticket. An employee gets out of line just paddle him. Or her.

It's amazing to me that so many people think that the only way to discipline young people is through physical violence. Ever watch the nanny shows? They find extremely effective ways to discipline children without beating them. Often the children themselves are prone to striking their siblings or parents, generally because that's the behavior that's been modeled for them in the first place. What children learn from being hit is that the person who is larger and in authority can hit you.

[IndianaJones]

12. only 13 states? should be more. nt.