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On the Washington Post's frontpage today, I read a rather disturbing story. It wasn't actual news, just one of those "issues" summaries they trot out for slow days, but still very creepy.
Paddling as a form of punishment in school is still allowed in 22 of the United States. Specifically, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas allow it pretty much everywhere, and a minority of districts in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming allow it. It's banned elsewhere.
Maybe this is old news to some of you, but I find it thoroughly backwards that a good third of the country instructs its school faculty to "burn students' butts if they step out of line," as a former Vice-Principal of a middle school in Mississipi was quoted (the V.P. had resigned after being told to paddle a little girl for talking back). According to the article, 342 thousand students were paddled in the U.S. in the year 2000. It drove home the point by mentioning that in no part of the country is it legal to smack prisoners on the rear as a disciplinary measure...
Paddling advocates point out that the practice is strictly regulated; in Meridian, Miss., "three quick licks with an officially approved, quarter-inch-thick wooden paddle" is the maximum penalty allowed, and every state but Texas requires prior parental permission. But the idea that there's some kind of "arse-beating regulatory commission" to approve paddle thickness is even more depressing to me.
I really wonder why we care so much about evolution in schools, while crap like this is going on.
Paddling as a form of punishment in school is still allowed in 22 of the United States. Specifically, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas allow it pretty much everywhere, and a minority of districts in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming allow it. It's banned elsewhere.
Maybe this is old news to some of you, but I find it thoroughly backwards that a good third of the country instructs its school faculty to "burn students' butts if they step out of line," as a former Vice-Principal of a middle school in Mississipi was quoted (the V.P. had resigned after being told to paddle a little girl for talking back). According to the article, 342 thousand students were paddled in the U.S. in the year 2000. It drove home the point by mentioning that in no part of the country is it legal to smack prisoners on the rear as a disciplinary measure...
Paddling advocates point out that the practice is strictly regulated; in Meridian, Miss., "three quick licks with an officially approved, quarter-inch-thick wooden paddle" is the maximum penalty allowed, and every state but Texas requires prior parental permission. But the idea that there's some kind of "arse-beating regulatory commission" to approve paddle thickness is even more depressing to me.
I really wonder why we care so much about evolution in schools, while crap like this is going on.
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