Are there any heroes left? YES! Here's one.

http://www.loper.org/~george/trends/2004/Feb/926.html

Texas:

February 2004 Corporal Punishment: U. S. Students Still Getting the
Paddle

"The debate over whether corporal punishment has a place in American
education became very personal for Ralph McLaney when the principal of
Carver Middle School ordered him to paddle a sixth-grade student who
had acted up in class.

'The idea of a big white guy hitting an 80-pound black girl because
she talked back to the teacher did not sit well with me,' said
McLaney, who resigned his assistant principal's post soon after the
school year began rather than carry out his superior's instructions.
'I decided I did not get my master's degree in education to spend my
time paddling students.'

Photo: Michael Dobbs -- The Washington Post

A decision last month by the Canadian Supreme Court to outlaw the use
of the strap by teachers has left the United States and a lone state
in Australia as the only parts of the industrialized world to allow
corporal punishment in schools, according to anti-paddling activists.
While 28 U.S. states have outlawed paddling over the past three
decades, the practice remains commonplace across much of the Bible
Belt.

Here in the nation's top paddling state, nearly 10 percent of students
are paddled every year, according to statistics collected by the
federal Department of Education. In poorer parts of the state, where a
higher proportion of children are from minority and single-parent
families, the use of corporal punishment is even more frequent.

'The point is to get the students' attention, not to inflict pain,'
said Carver Middle School principal Earnest Ward. 'Sometimes all you
have to do is hold a paddle up, and it will scare a student to death.
Others are not afraid of it at all.'

Although child psychologists say corporal punishment risks reinforcing
negative behavior, many Meridian teachers and parents consider it an
effective form of discipline, particularly at the elementary and
middle school level. They maintain that three quick licks (the maximum
permitted by the school board) with an officially approved,
quarter-inch-thick wooden paddle is often preferable to keeping
children out of class and putting them even further behind in their
studies.

And then there is the religious argument.

'Are we going to believe man's report or God's report?' asked Cherry
Moore, a special education teacher at Carver and co-pastor of a local
church. She believes that Old Testament references to 'spoiling the
child by sparing the rod' should outweigh the allegedly negative
effects of corporal punishment cited by child development experts.

The debate over corporal punishment at Carver Middle School, provoked
by one administrator's crisis of conscience, reflects a much broader
divide running through American education. Studies have shown that
there is a high correlation between paddling and poverty, and corporal
punishment is more common in rural areas than in urban areas. The
practice has been banned for more than a decade in Maryland, Virginia
and the District of Columbia.

Opponents of paddling argue that corporal punishment perpetuates a
cycle of poverty and violence. Supporters contend that paddling
undergirds orderly and disciplined schools, which represent a child's
best hope for social and academic advancement.

Although McLaney had taught in other Mississippi schools, mainly in
the metropolitan Jackson area, he concedes that he felt out of place
at Carver. The school draws most of its students from nearby housing
projects. More than 90 percent of them are eligible for free and
reduced-price lunches, a common measure of poverty. Three-quarters of
the children come from broken homes.

'In other Mississippi schools where I have worked, the paddle was a
dusty relic,' he said. 'It was put on the shelf and used when the
football player didn't want to miss the big game.'

When McLaney was appointed assistant principal of Carver Middle School
last summer, he agreed to enforce the school board's code of
discipline, which includes paddling. At the time, he said, he did not
realize he would be expected to paddle as many as 10 to 15 students a
day. When he sought to use other methods of disciplining students,
such as detention, his colleagues complained that he was shirking his
duties.

According to written notes kept by McLaney, he received repeated
admonishments from Ward, the principal, including comments such as,
'These kids are different, all they understand is the paddle,' and
'walk the halls and, if the kids are out of line, burn their butts.'
McLaney says he resigned as assistant principal on Sept. 30 when it
became clear to him that the alternative was to be fired for
insubordination.

Ward refuses to discuss his conversations with McLaney and describes
the resignation as a private personnel matter. He points out that
corporal punishment at Carver is carried out in strict accordance with
policies laid down by the school's board of trustees. The punishment
must be carried out by an administrator, in his office, in the
presence of a witness, and advance parental consent is required.

Typically, paddlings are administered for fairly minor offenses such
as disrespect to a teacher, disturbing the class, profanity or
tardiness. More serious infractions, such as fighting with other
students, are punished by suspension.

According to federal statistics, the use of corporal punishment has
been in sharp decline since the early 1970s, when states began to
outlaw the practice. In 2000, the most recent year for which figures
are available from the Department of Education, 342,038 public school
students were paddled, down from 1.5 million in 1976. The figures do
not include paddlings in private and religious schools.

'Under U.S. law, children are the only class of individuals who can be
legally hit,' said Nadine Block of the Center for Effective
Discipline, a leading anti-paddling group. 'Children have less legal
protection than someone who is in jail or in the army.'

In some states, such as Pennsylvania and Wyoming, corporal punishment
of students remains legal, though the institution has all but died
out. The top paddling states after Mississippi are Arkansas (9.1
percent of students paddled in 2000), Alabama (5.4 percent) and
Tennessee (4.2 percent.) According to Block, black students are
paddled more than twice as often as other students, proportionate to
the overall population.

Corporal punishment in schools is illegal in most of the rest of the
world and has been banned in most of Europe for several decades. In
the past few years, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Pakistan have all outlawed
the practice. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 30 that
teachers could use 'physical force' to restrain fighting students, but
were not permitted to use disciplinary instruments such as a paddle or
strap.

In its most recent ruling on paddling, the U.S. Supreme Court said in
1977 that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual
punishment, applied to convicted criminals but not to students. It
also ruled that teachers could punish children without parental
permission.

Most school districts that allow paddling now stipulate that it must
be done with the permission of parents, a requirement that has sharply
reduced the number of legal complaints. There are, however, school
districts in Texas where parental permission is still not necessary.

Jean Merrill, who lives in the northern Texas town of City View, said
she withdrew her 15-year-old daughter from the local secondary school
after she was paddled by the principal for wearing a T-shirt that
slightly exposed her midriff.

'I told the principal they were not to touch my child without calling
me,' she said. 'When he still refused to call, I pulled her out of
there.' School Superintendent Michael Smith said paddling is legal in
Texas, and no notification is required.

Like other Meridian schools, Carver Middle School sends parents a note
at the beginning of every school year, outlining its corporal
punishment policy. According to Ward, about 80 percent check the box
on Form 053-7198, which states: 'I do want corporal punishment
administered according to district policy if my child's behavior
indicates such a need.'

'When my son got spanked, he didn't act up anymore,' said Patricia
Moody, a Carver parent and security guard in a local hospital, who had
come to the school to retrieve her daughter after a classroom brawl.
'Three licks on the butt, and they get more control.'

McLaney, who came to teaching from a civilian job in the Navy, was
loath to give up his assistant principal's post, which paid $53,000,
'good money for Mississippi,' he said. When he asked the state
attorney general's office whether he could refuse to paddle a student
on grounds of conscience, he was told that there were no grounds for
refusing 'a valid, legal order' from his supervisor. A lawyer hired to
represent him by the teacher's union gave him similar advice.

'In the end, I resigned because they made it very clear they were
going to fire me otherwise,' said McLaney, who is still looking for
another education job." (Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, February 21,
2004)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments? Questions? Write me at .