Public Schools and Discipline

​Parent concerned with disciplining their children at home and wondering how the public schools in their state handle deal with discipline in the classroom might be surprised to learn that although corporal punishment is now banned in most juvenile correction facilities in the U.S., it still continues to be used in many public schools. That is what the Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found when they looked at the use of corporal punishment in public schools today.
 
According to a joint report from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, about 250,000 children in the United States are subjected to corporal punishment in public schools in the U.S. each year. Corporal punishment is banned in juvenile correction facilities due to a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that determined that while the Eighth Amendment protects convicted criminals from cruel and unusual punishment, it does not extend to cover students confined in classrooms. That paradox has led human rights organizations to attempt to get federal and state lawmakers to impose a national ban on the practice by likening it to trying to teach children not to hit others by hitting them.
 
The joint report utilized interviews with parents, students, and teachers, along with data from the U.S. Department of Education to reveal disturbing facts about how corporal punishment continues to be employed in classrooms across America, and that students with disabilities are the most disproportionately affected by the primitive methods of discipline used in schools today.
 
Although there is no comprehensive definition of corporal punishment under U.S. state or federal law, it is defined under human-rights law as "any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort." Corporal punishment is legal under domestic law in 20 states and the total number of students who were subjected to corporal punishment in the average school year is nearly a quarter of a million. Interestingly, Texas is the state that performs the most prisoner executions, and it is also the state that paddles the most students. Many people believe corporal punishment is still condoned in many classrooms because the educators charged with the often difficult task of maintaining order in the classroom will resort to it because their schools lack the resources or training for alternative methods of discipline and corporal punishment is quick, easy and cost effective to administer.
 
While corporal punishment may be quick, easy and cost effective for educators, it is not as attractive to the kids that the ACLU and Human Rights Watch documented as being hit with belts and rulers, pinched, slapped and hit, and even thrown into the walls and floors in our public schools. Perhaps even more disturbing was the finding that students with disabilities received corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates and students with autism were routinely punished for difficulties with appropriate social behavior that are very common with autism.
 
Bruising and injuring children in the course of restraint should not be acceptable in 21st century and the Society for Adolescent Medicine has documented serious medical consequences resulting from corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is bad for kids and it is bad for our schools and it is time to put an end to the practice in our school system nationwide.