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VI. Impact of Corporal Punishment

Corporal punishment in schools harms children and damages their education. The practice almost always causes immediate pain, and can result in lasting physical injury. It humiliates and degrades students, and may leave them depressed or withdrawn.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 against their peers or educators, and it can teach them that domestic violence is permissible. Furthermore, as a result of being physically punished, students can become less engaged in school, less motivated to succeed, and may become more likely to drop out.

Lasting Injuries and Immediate Pain

Many victims of corporal punishment in schools sustain serious injuries, as noted by the Society for Adolescent Medicine, including severe muscle injury, extensive bruising, and whiplash damage.²¹³ A girl in Mississippi was paddled in sixth grade: “[The coach] hit me so hard I felt nauseous at my stomach. I was mad because I remember I came home to take a shower, and I was like, I’m going to look and see if I have bruises. And I looked in the mirror and I had bruises all over, and I said, ‘Mama, come look.’”²¹⁴ Her mother took her immediately to the local hospital’s emergency department for medical care,²¹⁵ and also reported the incident to the sheriff’s office.²¹⁶ The same girl was paddled in twelfth grade: “[The principal] reared back and paddled me … you could see where the paddle hit and it was really red…. That was first period and I had bruises by third period.”²¹⁷ Once again, her mother took her to receive medical care,²¹⁸ and filed a sheriff’s report.²¹⁹

A middle school student in rural Mississippi was severely bruised when his beatings escalated. He was sent to the office for paddling, and “[w]hen I came back, [the teacher] said I was laughing so she sent me back and I got three more licks…. The principal was like, ‘you’re in here again already?’… He said, ‘Do you realize that every time you come in here I’m going to hit you harder and harder?’”²²⁰ When his mother met him after school, she noticed he was in pain. She found his buttocks were black from bruising.²²¹ It took more than a week for the bruises to heal, and during this period “he couldn’t sit down.”²²²

One very young student in Texas, a three-year-old boy attending a public pre-kindergarten program, was beaten and bruised during paddling. The program was run at the local elementary school and governed by the school district policy on discipline.²²³ The boy, who has diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), was paddled for taking off his shoes and for playing with an air conditioner. He became reluctant to go to school: his mother reported that “all he would say is that ‘she [the principal] hit him with a board.’”²²⁴ The child sustained bruises to his hips that reached around to his belly button.²²⁵ While this case may seem exceptional, it is a direct byproduct of the climate created in school districts by the regular use of corporal punishment.

Some students sustain injuries to other body parts. An 18-year-old San Antonio, Texas, girl sued her school district when she was hit on her buttocks and her hand. Her hand was injured when she tried to block one of the blows. She went to the emergency room with a severely swollen hand that was put into a cast.²²⁶ An injury to a hand is not unique to this case; many students use their hands or arms to protect themselves. Among our interviewees, a Mississippi high school junior reported that she reached back when the principal was swinging and was hit on her arm,²²⁷ and a Mississippi middle school boy reported that when the principal was about to paddle him, the boy put his hand back and the principal hit his thumb with the paddle.²²⁸

In one case the student paddled was visibly pregnant, as a Mississippi teacher described:

I had a pregnant girl get paddled once for being tardy. She was five months pregnant. She was 16. The principal paddled her … she was showing and it was known that she was pregnant. She was part of a group that was tardy to class. And she yelled something along the lines of “you shouldn't paddle me, I’m pregnant.”²²⁹

Nearly all students we spoke with had vivid memories of the immediate physical pain caused by corporal punishment. A recent graduate in Texas recalled of her sixth-grade paddling: “[I]t hurt. Oh yes. It stings, and I remember it brought tears to my eyes.”²³⁰ A former teacher in Mississippi reported that “[y]ou could hear it wooshing through the air and hitting an object. Some kids would say ‘No, No, NO,’ and then ‘Owww!’”²³¹ A fifth-grade girl remembered being beaten when she was in kindergarten: “they hit me on my bottom. It feeled like it burned and burned … it hurt.”²³²

Students describe the paddling as “stinging” or “burning.” They report that the effect can last for hours, and upon return to class, it is painful to sit. A female recent graduate remembered, “It hurt very much. There were definitely red markings and then swelling. I remember it being red on my buttocks. Almost welt-like markings. It didn’t last for more than a couple days. It was painful to sit down immediately after.”²³³ One 19-year-old girl described why it was difficult to sit: “You know how when you bite your lip it swells up a little bit? Well, that’s how my butt felt.”²³⁴

The risk of serious physical injury makes corporal punishment impossible to regulate, or administer in “appropriate” amounts. A former teacher in Texas argued, “There’s always a risk of a teacher hitting too hard. How can you control how hard a kid is hit?”²³⁵ A superintendent of a major Mississippi school district noted corporal punishment is “not worth the risk. If you paddle a child, you can’t pull their pants down and make sure there’s not a bruise there. You have to wonder and worry that if I administer corporal punishment, will I leave a mark and bruise?”²³⁶ Some students may receive more serious physical injuries from the same levels of paddling, perhaps because they bruise more easily, or because they have an underlying medical condition of which the school was not aware.A former president of the Dallas School Board emphasized that this was one reason for that district’s decision to prohibit corporal punishment: “It’s hard to know if someone is being too forceful, or if there’s a physical condition that they’re unaware of.”²³⁷

Some school districts have policies dictating that a child cannot be hit in anger, but these policies are virtually impossible to enforce. For instance, the Pontotoc County School District (Mississippi) states that all corporal punishment “shall be reasonable and moderate and not administered maliciously or for the purpose of revenge.”²³⁸ Gentry High School in the Indianola School District (Mississippi) asserts that “action may not be motivated by malice or anger.”²³⁹ It is next to impossible to assess the paddler’s state of mind at the time of paddling, since an educator can be angry or motivated by revenge, thus hitting with extra force, without revealing these emotions to others.²⁴⁰ None of the regulations related to the state of mind of the paddler or the “degree” of paddling that we have seen can be enforced in a way that would eliminate the risk of serious injury.

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. 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.”²⁴¹

Research suggests that children who are physically punished at home or at school may become less likely than other children to internalize moral values, and may become depressed or aggressive.²⁴² A 2005 UNESCO study notes that “[c]orporal punishment has been found to be consistently related to poor mental health; including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness in children and youth.”²⁴³

There have been fewer studies on the effects of corporal punishment in schools, as opposed to in the home. Nonetheless, studies suggest that school corporal punishment legitimates violence.²⁴⁴ 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, outbursts of aggression, deteriorating peer relationships, and a tendency for school avoidance and school drop out.²⁴⁵

Students interviewed by Human Rights Watch spoke of the psychological degradation caused by the punishment. Sean D., an 18-year-old boy, reported that in his school district in the Mississippi Delta, “you could get a paddling for almost anything. I hated it. It was used as a way to degrade, embarrass students.” Sean received paddlings himself in middle school: “After [location withheld] Middle School, I said I’d never take another paddling. It’s humiliating, it’s degrading. Some teachers like to paddle students…. Paddling causes you to lose respect for a person, stop listening to them.”²⁴⁶ Dr. Ollye B. Shirley, a former member of the school board in Jackson, Mississippi, asked, “What kind of classroom can you have once you’ve stopped the learning to beat somebody? I just thought kids shouldn’t be treated that way. They needed to be treated with dignity.”²⁴⁷ A current school board member in another district agreed, “Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don’t respect them. They leave that principal’s office and they think, ‘they don’t consider me as a human being.’”²⁴⁸

Research suggests that corporal punishment is linked to increased rates of bullying and aggression in school in the months and years following the punishment.²⁴⁹ Some studies suggest that children who are physically punished may be inclined to engage in aggressive conduct toward their siblings, parents, teachers, and schoolmates.²⁵⁰ There are no definitive studies separating the effects of corporal punishment in the home and in schools on the aggressiveness of the child, but researchers believe corporal punishment in the schools has deleterious effects.²⁵¹

Dr. Shirley, the former member of the school board in Jackson, Mississippi, a district that has abolished corporal punishment, noted:

One of the problems with corporal punishment is that students will fight back. I remember one incident where the girl struck back at the teacher. The child just knocked the teacher down because she just wasn’t going to take the whupping. That was one of the things that led me to oppose it. What do you think it does to high school students to be paddled in front of their peers?... It makes them angry … I think it’s dangerous.²⁵²

Both students and teachers we interviewed saw links between corporal punishment and bullying or peer aggression. One middle school boy said, “The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them…. When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it makes you mad and you want to do something about it.”²⁵³ A nine-year-old girl observed, “If they lay hands on me, I'll lay hands back.”²⁵⁴ “Students rarely think they did anything wrong,” commented one teacher. “Couple that with physical [punishment], that will elicit anger [from the student]. I have seen students acting out their aggression for receiving corporal punishment.”²⁵⁵ A former high school teacher in Mississippi agreed that “as a result, they [students] are violent with each other.”²⁵⁶

Academic Disengagement and Drop Out

Corporal punishment erodes students’ trust in their teachers and their schools. In the United Nations Secretary-General’s worldwide Study on Violence against Children, physical punishment in schools is noted as one factor that contributes to absenteeism, dropping out, and lack of motivation for academic achievement.²⁵⁷ According to Dr. Daniel F. Whiteside, assistant surgeon general to President Ronald Reagan, “corporal punishment of children actually interferes with the process of learning and with their optimal development as socially responsible adults.”²⁵⁸

Corporal punishment can lead to students feeling disrespectful and angry toward their educators. A middle school boy stated that corporal punishment made him feel violent toward the staff: “I wanted to fight [the principal] just for doing it to me. And the teacher who sent me to the office.”²⁵⁹ One teacher said, “As soon as they were paddled, they got sent back to the classroom, and the kid would be angry and say ‘Oh you just got me paddled.’ And it was like, ‘Well, that certainly didn’t solve anything.’ [I would imagine sarcastically saying to the principal,] ‘Thank you, I really want that child back right now.’ So I thought it was terrible.”²⁶⁰

An eleventh-grade boy whose friend was paddled told us that “[h]e won't say anything else to the teacher, even a friendly conversation. He’s mad at the teacher now.”²⁶¹ “Corporal punishment doesn’t create respect for teachers,” said one recent graduate in Texas. “I wasn’t going to let her put her hands on me.”²⁶²

Corporal punishment can leave students disengaged in school, less likely to succeed, and more likely to drop out. A Save the Children survey of children in South Asia found that regular beatings resulted in a loss of interest in studies and a drop in academic performance.²⁶³ A statistical study of public education in Alabama found a correlation linking corporal punishment in schools to drop-out rates.²⁶⁴

Links to Domestic Violence

Corporal punishment teaches both boys and girls that violence is acceptable when used against a weaker person. Psychologists argue there is a connection between corporal punishment and accepting or perpetrating domestic violence later in life.²⁶⁵ A Mississippi teacher and mother asked, “What are we teaching our young women when a school principal can swat a … young woman on the behind? We’re saying that it’s okay for a man to beat a woman. I just don’t get that at all. It’s a little too close to … something that we don’t want in our families—men beating on women.”²⁶⁶

Parents of both girls and boys were concerned about the messages their children received in school. A Texas mother explained her reasons for opting out of corporal punishment for her now 19-year-old daughter: “I tell the principal one of the reasons that I’m not going to let you hit my daughter is that I don’t want you conditioning her to accept abuse later. I mean domestic violence.”²⁶⁷ A Mississippi father was concerned about his son, after the father went to school and observed a 12-year-old girl being beaten by a male teacher: “I didn’t want my own son to see, to know it was okay to hit little girls.”²⁶⁸

Nevertheless, some parents and students support corporal punishment because they see it as an expression of concern for the child, through which the paddler is “acting like family.” A Mississippi teacher said, “Some teachers may just hit the kids…. There is an understanding that the teachers are almost like a part of the kid’s family. They know the kid’s family, and they give swats almost as a parent would.”²⁶⁹ The Society for Adolescent Medicine takes the position that this is particularly risky behavior: “Children who are spanked or subjected to other corporal punishment means in the home may arrive at school already programmed to be aggressive; corporal punishment in the schools only perpetuates this cycle of violence.”²⁷⁰ The notion that teachers are like family does not change the fact that corporal punishment remains destructive and degrading, and that children should be taught to counteract, not perpetuate, the violence that surrounds them.