VII. Impact of Corporal Punishment

Corporal punishment harms all children, damaging their education and making it harder for them to thrive. Corporal punishment causes immediate pain and can result in lasting physical injury and ongoing mental trauma. It humiliates and degrades students, and may leave them depressed or withdrawn. Corporal punishment teaches students that violence is acceptable: it can make students aggressive, angry, and more likely to lash out in school. Students can become less engaged in school, less motivated to succeed, and may become more likely to drop out. Students with disabilities, who are already marginalized in academic settings, may find that corporal punishment establishes additional barriers to inclusive education.

For many students with disabilities whose stories are documented in this report, physical punishment made their medical situation worse, for instance by exacerbating conditions such as autism, and triggering pain crises in sickle cell patients. The fact that corporal punishment can exacerbate students' disabilities further accentuates the inappropriate and abusive nature of the punishment.

Lasting Injuries and Barriers to Education

Many victims of corporal punishment in schools sustain serious injuries. The Society for Adolescent Medicine notes that injuries can include including severe muscle injury, extensive bruising, and whiplash damage.[148] A middle school student in rural Mississippi was severely bruised when paddling escalated. His mother found his buttocks were black from bruising.[149] It took more than a week for the bruises to heal, and during this period "he couldn't sit down."[150] A mother in Texas had a similar experience:

When I picked him up that afternoon, he was just kind of quiet. And then later I took a look. They were deep bruises. Not marks. They measured three inches by four inches. In the center of the bruises it was kind of clear. They ended up turning real dark. This wasn't just a little red mark, this was almost black. I ended up bringing him to the hospital, to the ER and everything.[151]

May R.'s seven-year-old daughter was badly bruised during restraint: "She came home with bruises from her shoulders to her wrists ... I called the school, what happened, where's the note? That's when the teacher told me about her armpits. I hadn't even realized that her armpits were bruised before then."[152] Rose C.'s son was injured when he was thrown into a tile floor and a stack of chairs: "the bridge of his nose was cut, and he had bruises on his forehead."[153] Anna M.'s son was seven years old when he was punished in school:

I'm in the front office ... They bring [my son] into the room. His nose is beet red. He lifts up his shirt sleeve, I get a glimpse of scratches all up his arm. I got overwhelmed, I couldn't focus ... I wanted to get my son to the doctor. I get him home and I take off his clothes. He was marked, top of his arms, under his arms, down his torso. He had a busted lip, which I hadn't noticed at first. He said, "they made me wash the blood off before I saw you."[154]

Depression and Anger

Corporal punishment is humiliating and degrading, may make students angry and ready to lash out at their peers or at educators, and may make them less inclined to engage in learning.[155] According to the Society for Adolescent Medicine, victims of corporal punishment may endure psychological harm, including difficulty sleeping, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, increased anger, feelings of resentment, and outbursts of aggression.[156] The American Academy of Pediatrics, in taking a position against corporal punishment, observes that "corporal punishment may adversely affect a student's self-image and school achievement and that it may contribute to disruptive and violent behavior."[157]

Michelle R., a special education teacher in Mississippi, notes that one of her students fell apart when he was paddled: "He started crying and this is a kid you just wouldn't imagine being that way ... It was actually an adverse reaction. He was just crying and just broke down, kind of a helplessness, 'I don't know what to do.'"[158] Anna M., the mother of a boy with autism in Florida, observed, "He's an avoider by nature, before he was never aggressive. Now, he struggles with anger; right after the incidents he'd have anger explosions."[159]

Academic Disengagement and Drop-Out

Students with disabilities, who already face barriers to education, can be further excluded from the educational process through the use of physical punishment.[160] The Society for Adolescent Medicine notes that corporal punishment is linked to a tendency for school avoidance and school drop-out.[161] According to Dr. Daniel F. Whiteside, assistant surgeon general under President Ronald Reagan, "corporal punishment of children actually interferes with the process of learning and with their optimal development as socially responsible adults."[162] A statistical study of public education in Alabama found a correlation between corporal punishment and drop-out rates.[163]

Students in schools with corporal punishment are constantly aware of the possibility of being beaten, a threat that discourages an open, trusting relationship between students and educators. A teacher in Louisiana noted that her elementary school students constantly heard paddling: "we'd be in the middle of math class and we'd hear a crack."[164] An 18-year-old remembered high school paddlings: "I didn't see it but I could hear it. Licks would be so loud and hard you could hear it through the walls. You could hear the moans and yelling through the walls."[165] One fifth-grade boy in special education classes recalled that his principal threatened him: "[he] told me that 'if I could paddle you I would beat you black and blue.'"[166]

This violent, threatening environment can be particularly corrosive for some students with disabilities. Jennifer Parker, an advocate for students with sickle cell anemia[167] in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee, commented that the violent atmosphere can be harmful to her students: "If they're in a school where the atmosphere is constant corporal punishment, you can see an indirect stress effect that causes pain crises, even if that child isn't touched."[168]

Students with disabilities, who already face barriers to education, may disengage from school when faced with a violent environment. Sarah P. reported that her grandson with Asperger's Syndrome was traumatized by the paddling that took place at his elementary school: "It made him much more introverted. He very much didn't want to go to school ... No one's supposed to go to school to be tortured, school is supposed to be fun."[169] Rose C.'s then 15-year-old son, who has autism, "started getting agitated, kept saying, 'no school, no school.' I assumed that he was just a teenager, that he didn't like school ... But he was throwing fits because he was getting hurt."[170]

Aggravation of Condition

For some students with disabilities, physical punishment can aggravate their medical conditions.[171] Furthermore, corporal punishment can cause some children to regress in developmental terms, particularly for children on the autism spectrum. Corporal punishment, which is never appropriate for any child, is particularly abusive for these children.

Students with sickle cell anemia, for example, may be particularly affected by paddling. Sickle cell anemia is a condition that is characterized by "unpredictable episodes of severe and sometimes excruciating pain"[172] that can affect the bones, lungs, abdomen, and joints.[173] Jennifer Parker, the advocate who works with more than 750 school-age sickle cell patients in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas through a hospital clinic, described how physical punishment can affect her patients:

Any kind of mental or physical stress can be a pain trigger for these students, for a pain crisis. Not only do I believe that [paddling] makes our kids' behavior worse, it also makes them medically more fragile. We give our kids pain rating scales. They range from mild to moderate to severe (moderate means they stay home from school, severe means they go to hospital). If they're paddled, it's an immediate trigger for a possible moderate to severe pain crisis ... we've had children end up in the hospital, later that day or the next day, depending on when the paddling occurred. The parents tend to be good about following that. Pain episodes can also be really random. We can't say with certainty, but we think it's so often about paddling.[174]

A student with serious congenital brain abnormalities and developmental disabilities was also particularly affected by physical punishment. English, a boy in Georgia, was physically punished on numerous occasions during elementary school, including by excessive force used during "basket" holds. His mother described how he regressed after the trauma:

At home ... I would stand behind him [like the teacher had during the basket holds]. He would flinch, and holler, and say no. He was afraid, he was jumping. He had nightmares. Even others, just trying to hug him, he wasn't able to tolerate it, it was overwhelming ... He learned that trauma from the basket holds. He didn't want anyone to touch him ... He was regressing. He started to need pull-ups again, whereas [before] he was OK, not needing pull-ups.[175]

Students with Conditions on the Autism Spectrum

Physical punishment can be especially traumatic for students on the autism spectrum. All children on the autistic spectrum demonstrate some degree of qualitative impairment of communication and reciprocal social interaction.[176] Parents we spoke with felt physical trauma caused their children to regress developmentally.

Among the families we interviewed, several students on the autism spectrum who received corporal punishment in the early grades regressed in toilet training. Theresa E.'s granddaughter with autism was physically punished in kindergarten: "In the second week, I'd go to school, she'd be soaking, she'd have peed herself over and over ... by the third week, we'd see feces in her clothes ... and Jessie had been potty trained since she was two."[177] Sharon H., the mother of a girl with autism who was five years old when she was physically punished, had a similar experience: "She was fully potty trained but all that went away. Nighttime bedwetting started. And during the day. She soiled herself."[178]

Some parents observed that their children with autism exhibited self-injurious behavior after single or repeated episodes of corporal punishment, whereas previously these children had not injured themselves.[179] As Theresa E. noted, "after two months in the school, [my granddaughter's] behavior had changed ... she'd bite herself, teeth marks on her arms ... she'd sit and bang her head up against the wall, 'til she had bruises on her forehead."[180] Jacquelyn K. commented, "From that day on [after paddling], it was harder to deal with anything that upset [my grandson]. He would scream, cry, throw things, hit himself upside the head. You had to always watch him, he couldn't be alone ... Before this he hadn't hit himself ever."[181]

Many parents noted that their children with autism became more fearful after receiving corporal punishment, especially around their schools. Anna M.'s seven-year-old son changed after he was restrained and beaten: "He would never leave my side. He had major nightmares, screaming. He wouldn't go to Walmart, anywhere. He'd say 'we're going to run into him [the person who administered physical punishment].'"[182] Jacquelyn K. told us that her grandson became terrified of school: "He was scared of going over there, scared it would happen again. When a child with autism has something like that happen, they don't forget it. It's always fresh in their minds."[183]

Some students with autism became more aggressive following episodes of physical punishment. Jacquelyn K. commented:

When he started the school he didn't have a discipline problem. It's what they did to him that escalated his symptoms. He's more aggressive now, it's on a higher level. Everything was escalated ... When you have a child with autism go through a traumatic experience, it takes it to another level ... He was a nice quiet, calm boy ... now he has these meltdowns all the time. He can't focus, he cries.[184]