The USA wins the spanking war, but which is the top US State?

That's how I currently perceive the school spanking situation here in the Lone Star State as well--paddling of students in public schools is pretty much prohibited in the large urban and suburban districts, however it's still practiced quite a bit in the rural areas, notably the western, northwestern and northeastern areas of the state.

When I first started my high school teaching career (as a Yankee 'transplant') in a Texas city back in the early 1980s, I had the authority to paddle my students, as did every teacher there, although most of the corporal punishment seemed to be carried out by administrators (assistant principals) and of course coaches.

What struck me (pun not intended) was the apparent lack of guidelines and procedures regarding the application of the paddle, other than the fact that it was to be applied over clothing. While there tended to be professional inservice training on numerous subjects, some of which was rather pointless, there was never any of it about the administration of CP.

I recall a teaching colleague of mine who did occasionally paddle his pupils, and even those of a female teacher at her request, trying to convince me that I could be quite effective at wielding a paddle myself. I gave him a vaguely worded refusal to the effect that I lacked the proper mindset, however my true reason for declining his suggestion was that I personally sexualized spanking. Several years later, after the school administration decided to encourage teachers practicing CP to have another staff member present as a witness, I did end up 'officially' watching a couple of brief paddlings administered by the teacher whose classroom was next to mine.

Obviously, they were hardly anything like the fantasies which I later fabricated in my writing...

--C.K.

I saw a list for 2017 and Arkansas was the top state for paddling that year. I can't recall which state was second, but I believe Alabama was third. Texas was indeed near the top, and California was 27th. No state gave a zero score.

As a Texan, my observation is that Texas likely gets mentioned most simply because it is the most populous Southern, conservative state. It would not shock me to find that Texas had the most school paddlings, and that another state such as Oklahoma or Louisiana had a higher per capita rate of paddling.

I live in a large school district (28th largest in Texas) that has a no-paddling policy. Many of the larger urban school districts have a similar policy. On the other hand, many of the rural districts use the "board of education" quite freely.

I grew up in Ohio in another century, and the paddle was used quite frequently there. At a recent reunion, some of my classmates reminisced about teachers who "had a good swing". I have little comparison data, my last paddling was in middle school, and from a teacher who clearly had it in for me and fabricated incidents as an excuse to paddle. Once I got to high school, I was one of the "good kids" who never got it.

Every morning, there would be a long list of names called to report to the office. Since I was never called, I had no idea what this was about. Turns out 90% of those called had been caught skipping class, and each guilty party was subject to three swats. Boys reported to the athletic director (who had been a sports protege of my father), and girls reported to a woman who coached a couple of girl's sports. I am told both individuals were fit and had a good swing.

In today's society, any schools still practicing corporal punishment are flirting with disaster. I was in school from 1979-1992, and I only ever heard of one kid ever receiving corporal punishment at school. But, even that had an asterisk by it. It was the mother of that kid who came to the school and administered to him, so does that even count? So one day, around say, 1985 or so, I got curious and asked about this whole corporal punishment thing. It was like this urban myth of sorts. You would hear of it, but that was about it. Well, I was told that it had in essence, been reduced to a paper tiger. I was told that while it had been done in years past, there was getting to be too much liability with it. One teacher even told me in so many words, "let's put it this way, no teacher ever got terminated for sending a student to detention". And she has an extremely serious look on her face when she said it. That's when I started hearing of lawsuits coming down as a result of it and how teachers who had done it were made to fall on their swords. The principals and the administration were hanging their teachers out to dry when the lawsuits came down. And the school boards were doing the same to the principals if they had been involved in any way. So for that to have been the case way back then, in a not so soft society as we have now, I can't imagine any school official today being bold enough to roll the dice on this. Personally, I couldn't imagine doing such a thing to a kid anyway, but if I were a teacher/principal/coach, etc, I would chose being gainfully employed over corporal punishment.

This study is a little out of date, being published in 2016 using 2011-2012 data, but according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 22.1% of districts in Alabama, 15.2% in Arkansas, and 35.7% in Mississippi have at least one school using corporal punishment to discipline more than a quarter of its students in the 2011–2012 school year.

A total of 163,333 students were paddled at least once during the year. 32,157 were in Mississippi, which represents 7% of all public school students in that state. The next highest percentages were Alabama (27,887 students, 4%) and Arkansas (20,609 students, 4%).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/

The total number for 2015-2016 dropped to around 100,000. The number of students receiving physical discipline in school dropped from 1 out of every 125 students in 2000 to 1 out of every 500 students in 2015-16.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2018/05/corporal_punishment_201 5_16_federal_civil_rights_data.html

A 2018 survey put Arkansas in first place and Alabama 2nd place. California was around 27th place.

My old State School in the 1960s UK went Comprehensive in the early 70s after I had left. In the mid 70s my Mum did some minor admin work for the school to supplement her pension. My old headmaster who was a hand caner had retired as the the school went Comprehensive, and the new head was a backside caner.

I had left home in '75 and was working in another part of the country, but my Mum told me that one boy had done the unthinkable and punched a teacher. Apparently his parents were called in and where told he would get either six severe cuts or expulsion. According to my Mum she heard they were very severe. There was another case with this same Head in the local paper the next year where a boy's parents had complained to the Dept of Education that the Headmaster had drawn blood when he caned their son. He was not prosecuted or censured though. It all changed of course in '86 though.

Brosse6
If this were today (especially if it happened here in the U.S.) oh my goodness, people would be locked away for life. Of course, everyone here in the U.S. has a lawyer on retainer these days. And there are plenty of parents who don't have much, so they would LOVE a lawsuit. Plus, by the time that the parents of today were coming through school, corporal punishment was gone. So, if they never got it, their kids sure as heck better not or the lawyer's office is gonna get a ring. If a kid were to hit a teacher in the modern era, they would just turn the matter over to the police and the kid would be expelled with no appeals or anything.

mianders

Must have been private schools. CP is against the law in California public schools.

I beg to differ. Yes, I'm American but I have lived in the UK for significant spans of time. I find paddling as it is described in schools in the U.S. South somewhat crude and of scant interest. In contrast, spanking in the U.K. and France, to name just two European locales, tends to inspire more creativity, in my view. The cane, for example, is an implement that needs to be used with finesse. School stories in England usually fit this requirement for me. I recall reading many years ago The Discipline of Odette, for example, and Angela Pearson's novels: they are highly erotic and to me, provide the kind of stimulation sought in this literature. One American novel I read long ago was Raymond Rogers' The Spanking Stepmother. I still see many of the refinements of spanking from that book appearing in stories written now.