Study makes a case against paddling, finds link between corporal punishment, failure to graduat

[d_r]

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

Kids who are paddled at school are more likely to be black, more likely to be poor and more likely to be boys. And that's why a UTC professor studying the issue says schools should rethink their policies on corporal punishment.

Poor and minority children already face an uphill educational battle, with lower overall academic achievement and lower graduation rates.

And Darrell Meece, an education professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, says paddling only makes things worse. His dive into data on corporal punishment found that kids who are paddled are three times more likely not to graduate high school.

"Children who are living in poverty, children who are in minority groups are less likely to graduate in the first place. We know that," he said. "Corporal punishment exacerbates that, it makes it even less likely that they graduate. These are vulnerable kids already."

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/11/long-term-study-makes-a-case-against/

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19 states still allow corporal punishment in schools. Many will argue that this is one "tool" among many that educators can use, and so they should have access to it. Others will argue that they were paddled and turned out "OK" (I was paddled as a child in school, but I also never sat in a car seat, never wore a bike helmet, and rode in the back of my Dad's pickup truck). My response is that if someone developed a "tool" that made building houses less expensive, but 20 years later half of the houses that were built with that tool had fallen down, we wouldn't want to use that tool. There would be many people who could say "my house was built with that tool and it is still standing fine." but I wouldn't want to build my house with it. My take is that today the children with the least social capital are the most likely to experience paddling in school. We know that these also are the children who are least likely to graduate. We can show them that school is a predictable, safe place for them to be, or we can show them that it is scary place where people will hit you to get you do what you want and you probably don't want to be here in the first place.