Last Monday, the Memphis City School Board officially banned
spanking in public schools. No, you are not reading a reprint of an
article from 40 years ago.
Spanking as school punishment, evidently, is not only alive but
still thriving in parts of the United States.
For years, students across Memphis, Tenn., were actually spanked
with a wooden paddle as punishment. But those days are over. In a
startlingly close 5-4 vote, the district decided instead to turn
toward nonviolent problem-solving strategies instead. Yet other
large metropolitan school districts, such as Dallas, Houston and
Tampa, still permit spanking.
What’s going on here? Why is this even happening? The
plain truth is that some child-raising techniques, no matter their
merit or lack thereof, aren’t meant for the classroom ““
in any way, for any reason.
Spanking is a prime example. It is an issue that must be tackled
directly and immediately for the benefit of the students. School
must be a safe space for all, and safety does not include
spanking.
In a Parents magazine study from several years ago, 72 percent
of respondents claimed they believed spanking was an acceptable
punishment. But I’m one of the kids who never was spanked.
And I’m glad.
When I committed a wrong, say, kicking my little sister in a fit
of sibling rivalry, my parents explained to me what I did wrong,
then gave me a time-out. It was my duty to “think about what
I’ve done.” And, partially due to these time-outs, I
lied, kicked, and generally committed wrongs less often. I was no
easy kid, but I learned my lessons through nonviolent means.
Unfortunately, lots of kids aren’t so lucky at home, but
it’s even worse when they’re paddled at school. And in
the 2003-2004 school year, teachers and staff dealt 27,918
paddlings to the more than 118,000 students in the Memphis
district. The paddling wasn’t equitably distributed either
““ Airways Middle School, for example, accounted for a total
of 9 percent of the paddlings, while 38 of the district’s 192
schools didn’t paddle at all.
So when parents did decide to vote on physical punishment, many
were still in support of paddling. After all, the ban barely
passed.
Spanking, some claimed, holds clear advantages: It only causes
temporary pain, and at the end of the day, spanking is a simple and
lasting way to discipline children. Or so they delude
themselves.
“(Spanking) made me realize that not only my mother and
father are watching me ““ there are other people who care
about what happened to me,” said Wayne Mathis, a former
Memphis school attendee in support of spanking during an interview
with the Los Angeles Times.
But Mathis misses the point in order to lend support to the
quick, yet flawed, punishment of spanking. In his book,
“Beating The Devil Out Of Them,” Murray A. Straus,
founder and co-director of the Family Research Lab at the
University of New Hampshire, clarifies that most parents use
corporal punishment to teach their children important behavioral
lessons. These goals are fair enough.
But “while that may be their intention, the evidence …
indicates that spanking and other legal forms of corporal
punishment are more likely to block that goal.” In fact,
research shows that positive reinforcement and other nonviolent
tactics are more helpful.
There’s also the issue of abuse. It seems particularly
cruel to spank a child at school, and there’s no way to know
whether the school is administering a fair punishment.
But parents and teachers bring up another argument. And this one
is a bit more tricky. They argue that there are fundamental
differences between the Memphis schools. The difference is that
some of these schools are primarily composed of black students. And
it’s the black schools ““ not the white ones ““
that paddle most often. “I’m talking about how black
people raise their children,” Ted Anderson, Memphis social
studies teacher and former basketball coach, told the Los Angeles
Times.
The son of sharecroppers himself, Anderson was known around his
Memphis school as the coach who paddled players for missing
baskets. “In the white community, it might work to tell a
child, “˜Go to your room without dinner.’ Well, in the
black community, there was no dinner. There was no room to go
to,” he said.
Anderson may have a point. But the fact remains that no matter
one’s personal, political or historical traditions, some
values just don’t translate to school life. Sometimes school
procedures and family preferences are best left apart.
It’s un-American to impose such practices on public
government-funded institutions and schools. Children should never
bear the brunt of these biased choices.
School must be a safe space ““ not a damaging one. I
understand a parent’s or teacher’s need to discipline
children, but paddling and spanking are not the answer.
Fried is a second-year history student. E-mail her at
ifried@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.