Study makes a case against paddling, finds link between corporal punishment, failure to graduat
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/
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.
Baitball Blogger
(47,651 posts)Someday we'll look back and everyone will recognize that we are living through institutionalized racism.
NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)Yes, corporal punishment should be banned in schools. It does a lot more harm than good.
the_sly_pig
(746 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)and ingrained in this culture. Black is bad, white is good is still the logic of many. Until we get to a point of seeing all as human beings, bleeding the same red blood. and away from labels of color and such, we will stay mired in our circular firing squad. Will we ever wake up? I hope so before a fascist dictator finds the key words to slip in under the radar and.........
bemildred
(90,061 posts)This is not new.
mountain grammy
(27,129 posts)in NC in 1958 (only white kids, though, schools were still segregated) and it's child abuse now!
I can still see the face of my little red headed friend having to bend over and be paddled in front of the class. I was as terrified as he was. My parents were in the principle's office the next morning informing her that their children were not to be abused by any teacher. We had just been stationed there and had just started our new school.
sorefeet
(1,241 posts)in the third grade, 8 years old. Pulled me up in front of the whole class, hit my ass 3 times with a big flat board and it hurt bad. Traumatized me for life I realize that now. I was innocent of what I was accused, a few kids just pointed to me and the teacher beat my ass. I remember mom was going to go to school and raise hell but my dad wouldn't let her. I quit in the 12th grade after my teacher told me to go to the office. They were going to beat me again because I broke a rule. I took my money out of the bank early for a car and wasn't allowed to until the school season was over. Soooooo, I went straight to my locker, got my shit out of it, left and never looked back. The study makes sense to me, I was scared daily of school. Of course lots of shame in quitting also. So lets make alcohol our best friend for 40 goddamned years. DU is now a safe haven for me to draw sanity, logic and education from.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)We start everyone at the same age. Some children are not ready, not mature enough. It is not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of being able to sit still and listen, of being able to remain sitting for what is to a child an interminably long, boring time. Smaller classes would help.
But the most important thing is to have a play-oriented three-year pre-school available for every child at no cost to the family. That's what many European countries like Austria, Germany and France provided when I lived there. A child needs to learn to be in a classroom situation without the rigors of strict lessons.
Obama has proposed something like this. We need to fund and implement it. It would be such a godsend for kids like you were. My children had that kind of pre-school. They were never pushed, and they had to take a drawing test to get into the first grade. That drawing test revealed their readiness for school, their ability to follow simple directions, etc.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Sounds like your mom was a real stand-up lady, trying to do the right thing for you. I applaud her for that; my own mother had to deal with a principal who was getting ME in trouble for no reason when I was in the 4th grade(no paddlings, though).
Sorry about your dad, though; guess he couldn't be assed to do the moral thing.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)comparisons to Ariel Castro come to mind
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)There is more harm with having your child eat at McDonald's several times a month than receiving the occasional smack on the tuckus. Perhaps we should regulate how often a person can take their children to restaurants and what a child can order?
But just as nasal-voiced conservatives screaming, "What about the children!? What about the children!?" are the epitome of Tea Bagger Taliban obnoxiousness, it is inarguable that loudmouthed groups insinuating themselves into the private lives of individuals is offensive, regardless if the group is conservative or liberal.
d_r
(6,907 posts)not the private lives of individuals
antigone382
(3,682 posts)No one is going into anyone's living room. Furthermore, it is a scientific study, not a piece of proposed legislation. We know that McDonald's menu items are bad for kids because of scientific studies.
Who exactly is the loudmouth here? What is the problem with data that shows that hitting kids is not effective? Why are you so offended that someone did some research?
What do you propose? Should we avoid investigating the effects of these physical punishments, so that no one has to think twice before hitting a kid? Why be attached to hurting someone if it just plain isn't effective?
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)http://www.unscientificamerica.com/
There is, perhaps, a hundred years of well-substantiated science which shows that punishment, defined and distinct from positive and negative reinforcement, can change behavior but also creates unwanted behaviors and aggression, almost all of it destructive in some way, and nearly always perpetrated by the powerful against the smaller and less powerful. It is administered by people we call bullies. It's irrelevant whether they are parents or dog owners or whomever, when they resort to punishment they are satisfying an inner urge for aggression, perhaps born of a deep-seated sexual frustration or inability to deal with being weaker than everyone in the life around them, going beyond simply changing behavior, doing nothing more than beating up on the weak. Not much difference between them and some mass murderer, they just prefer, many times, to do their cowardly work behind closed doors.
People who use punishment deserve every consequence that can be mustered against them. They are no better than the lowest, most despicable criminals in our society. That includes the teacher who hits a kid, (such as the ones ion Boston who soaked switches in vinegar to beat black children because, as they said, "their skins are tougher, you know" , or the pathetic bully of a parent who smacks the kid on the tuckus.
If the goal is changing behavior, they should get a book, read up on behavioral theories taught in the most basic of college courses, and move their thinking out of the 18th century. Or just join the rest of the people who deny that the earth is getting warmer and that vaccines cause autism, and quit being a lying hypocrite.
TBF
(33,776 posts)I never understood this mindset. You beat the crap out of an adult it's assault - beating children is acceptable and even desirable. And folks wonder why children grow up to be violent? Gee ... I'd have to think about whether there's a connection ...
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Or is the corporal punishment a RESPONSE to the failure of the child in school.
Every child, regardless of race or economic background needs three years of pre-school to prepare it for the rigors of classroom life.
That's what children get in Germany and Austria and a lot of other countries in which gradeschool classrooms are calmer and more orderly than in urban America.
It isn't the school that is unsafe, it is the children (not necessarily of any particular race) who are unprepared for the sitting, the need to pay attention, the distractions of the other children, the order that is necessary in the classroom and, in some cases, the listening and learning and participation skills children need in school.
All it takes is one child who is unable to cope with the stress of sitting still for a lesson and you have a class that is impossible to manage. Then, some child, not necessarily the immature one, gets blamed. Teacher is frustrated and angry. And someone gets punished.
But it isn't in my view the act of punishment, it is the situation that led to the punishment that is the problem.
Obama has a plan for preschool education for all children. Let's adopt it.
These kinds of studies can show a correlation, but they cannot exclude other potential causes and therefore do not definitively show causation.
Beyond that, I generally oppose corporal punishment.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)d_r
(6,907 posts)but there were two parts to the study, and only one is reported on. In the first, children's externalizing scores (aggressive, defiant, acting out sorts of behavior) were predicted each year grades 2-9 from the previous year's externalizing scores and the experience of corporal punishment in school. So, this is controlling for previous externalizing behavior, predicting change in externalizing behavior from year to year. School-based corporal punishment predicted increases in externalizing behavior in grades 2,3,4,5,7,8 and conduct reports from grade 9. This means that the school-based corporal punishment was predicting increases in externalizing behvior beyond what would be expected.
For the high school graduation rates, each child who received corporal punishment was matched statistically do a child who did not, based on the children's maternal-rated temperament at age 4.5 (the summer before kindergarten), parental use of corporal punishment, socioeconomic status, sex, and race. Basically, this treats it like a quasi-experimental design to control for those variables - you could think of it as a treatment group who received corporal punishment in school and matched with a control group who did not. The graduation comparison is based on this design to control for those variables.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)California does not permit it. Yet we have a high drop-out rate. Apparently only 20 states allow corporal punishment.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html
California has a 5% drop-out rate.
Alabama has a 1.5% drop-out rate.
http://high-school-dropout-rates.findthedata.org/
Alabama also has a high percentage of school corporal punishment.
On the other hand Arkansas has fairly high corporal punishment and drop-out rates.
I question the study. It was very narrow.
I don't favor corporal punishment in the schools, but I just don't think the study reflects all the factors that affect dropping out of school. I think it proves what those who did the study hoped to find.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)The correlation that students who are paddled in school are more likely to drop out isn't an attempt to explain all dropouts. It's looking at a possible factor that leads to a higher risk of student drop out.
There's probably a positive correlation between having addicted or imprisoned parents and student dropout rates but that wouldn't explain why all students drop out.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)If not, it did not consider all possible factors that cause drop-outs. That's all I am trying to say. The study is flawed. The conclusion is not accurate because it does not cover all the bases.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)There are correlates to drop out rates in both states. The sets of correlates probably have a high degree of overlap. There's at least one correlate that doesn't overlap, namely paddling.
d_r
(6,907 posts)State statistics for levels are here (it isn't very fresh data):
http://www.stophitting.com/index.php?page=statesbanning
This compares graduation rates in the 19 states that allow schoool-based corporal punishment vs. those that do not, controlling for % of children who qualify for free lunch:
My take on it is that currently the children who have the least social capital are most likely to receive corporal punishment at school. Poor rural white kids and poor black kids. We already know that. We also already know that there is an achievement gap between poor black kids and white middle class kids. That isn't a causal connection. But it exacerbates it. It makes a bad situation worse. It is one factor among many, but it makes a unique independent contribution.
Duppers
(28,218 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)The saddest part is is that corporal punishment appears to have been introduced to the black community via none other than slavery.
"The origin and true purpose of the paddle."
George Ryley Scott; William H. Grier, M.D. and Price M. Cobbs, M.D.
http://nospank.net/slave.pdf
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)K&R
olddad56
(5,732 posts)d_r
(6,907 posts)that has more information on the findings:
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I'm really shocked.