Cane mutiny in American schools

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 15

Cane mutiny in American schools

By

WILLIAM SCOBIE,

“Observer,” London

A 17-year-old Houston schoolboy recently sued his teacher over a spanking administered in class and won 81000 in damages. The ten “pops” handed out for “sniffing glue in woodwork class” cost the instructor, Lesine Goode, 8100 each. The award raised to boiling point a national controversy over use of corporal punishment in United States schools. “If it isn’t allowed in the British Navy or in our jails.” says the Los Angeles School Board president Howard Miller, “then it’s pretty difficult to justify with children.” “Rubbish,” responds his fellow-board member Richard Ferraro “Teachers are mugged and murdered almost daily. Children literally thumb their noses at authority. Paddling is a powerful deterrent.” To spank or not to spank? Today, only four American states — Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — prohibit the beating of

schoolchildren. New York, Chicago and — until last October — Los Angeles, plus some 50 lesser school districts, also ban corporal punishment. Although the Los Angeles Board of Education has voted to restore use of the cane, protest and controversy over that decision make it unlikely that spanking will be resumed at an early date. A majority of Los Angeles teachers, however, insist that the paddle is essential to classroom discipline. The teachers’ union led the fight, for restoration against the combined forces of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Committee on Child Abuse, plus a legion of psychiatrists, psychologists, and worried parents. In a dozen other major cities, the teachers’ right to spank has been retained through collective bargaining agreements. The American Federation of Teachers is firmly in favour, and so is the

United States Supreme Court which in 1977 declared that corporal punishment does not violate the Eighth (“cruel and unusual puishment”) Amendment to the Constitution.

The practice is “rooted in history,” said a majority (5-4) of the court, and schools are “open institutions” controlled by the community.

“That seems to mean that nothing very terrible can happen to a child while the community is watching,” says a child psychologist, Adah Maurer, of Berkeley, California. “But if you look only at the case under consideration by the Supreme Court (Ingraham vs. Wright in Florida) you find that the boy was beaten more than 20 times with a two-foot paddle by the school principal while

two teachers held him down. He was in bed, face down, for a week.” And the Houston youth who won that $lOOO in damages said his bruises required $250 worth of medical treatment.

Abolitionists argue that corporal punishment is often administered for offences such as chewing gum, talking, or lateness, but can result in damage

to hearing, the sciatic nerve, or the central, nervous system. “Most often, though,” says one child psychologist, “it degrades the student in his own eyes, so that he loses his selfrespect and his respect and trust in the teacher.” Child abuse in the home is a serious national problem, said Dr Kerby Alvy, a mental health specialist, mvimony before the Los Angles School Board, and me abused child has

more learning problems, so he or she is more likely to be beaten in school, “learning violence as a way of solving problems in adulthood.” Abolitionists also point out that all Eastern Communist bloc countries, including Russia, as well as Japan, France, Israel, and many other nations, have banned beatings as an “educational tool.” It ill becomes the “advanced” United States, they charge, to continue a “barbaric” practise.

Another complaint is that the children most often struck are blacks or “minority” youngsters. But a California Department of Education study seems to disprove this: in the 1972-73 school year there were 46,000 corporal punishment incidents among 4,000,000 pupils. Of these 27,000 were “Anglo,” 7600 Hispanic, 3800 black, and 6600 unidentified racially.

Recent United States surveys also indicate that

most parents favour corporal punishment when it is strictly controlled and delivered by a principal in the presence of another adult. “In those 46,000 Los Angeles cases,” says a Department of Education spokesman, “there were only 600 complaints from families. Often a spanking is the kindest, quickest way to handle a disciplinary problem. It's less cruel than, say, isolating a kid for long periods.” On the national scene, debate is growing sharper year by year. In the last 12 months, 10 State legislatures which lacked specific “spanking statutes” have explicitly recognised as lawful corporal punishment in schools. The nineteenth century jingle, “Reading and writing and ’rithmetic/Are taught to beat of a hickory stick,” seems to be the order of the day. Right or wrong, the children of the 1980 s will remain the last Americans who can be legally beaten. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.