corporal punishment should be banned in all educational institutions essay

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Argumentative Essay: Should Corporal Punishment Have a Place in Education?

Corporal punishment is the act of using physical force to punish a student for wrongdoing. It might involve a ruler across the back of the hand or a cane to the rear. Corporal punishment has since been outlawed as a cruel and unusual punishment. In this essay, I explore the for and against of implementing corporal punishment within education.

One reason to bring back corporal punishment is to give power back to teachers again. Teaching staff often struggle to chastise students because current punishments have no intimidation power. If they have no power to intimidate students, there’s nothing to fear and no deterrent. A lack of corporal punishment leaves teachers powerless to prevent bad behavior.

On the other hand, corporal punishment often causes injuries and trauma unnecessarily. Many acts of corporal punishment leave visible marks and bruises. The mental anguish, particularly for vulnerable students, can last a lifetime. This doesn’t have the effect of dealing with bad behavior. It can lead directly to lifelong mental problems.

There are also studies showing corporal punishment has no effect on bad behavior. They demonstrate the behavior altering effects is actually trauma coming to the surface. This can cause chronic low confidence and low self-esteem.

Corporal punishment is a viable alternative to suspension. Children often don’t enjoy school. A suspension from school can send out the message it’s a reward rather than a punishment. Using corporal punishment keeps students in school and punishes them, therefore making it clear it isn’t a reward.

There’s always the risk of it leading to abuse in the classroom, however. Teachers do differ in how hard they hit a student. There’s a difference between a 100-pound female teacher and a 250-pound male teacher delivering corporal punishment. This leads to an uneven system whereby the severity of the punishment largely revolves around luck. It’s unfair on students and only makes abuse by teachers more likely.

When a student is punished severely, parents often have to leave work to collect them and take them home again. It disrupts the school schedule and the parent’s schedule. Constant call-outs could lead to a parent losing their job for being unreliable. It can cause a great deal of damage to a family. Corporal punishment stops this from happening because it places the trust in the hands of the teachers.

Putting trust in teachers isn’t something everyone is willing to do, however. Sexual abuse is a major topic in schools and parents are rightly worried about the chances of this abuse manifesting itself. Abuse comes in many different forms. A male teacher could touch a female student on the breast and claim he was meant to touch her on the shoulder. All corporal punishment does is increase the likelihood of sexual abuse occurring.

These are the main arguments for and against corporal punishment. They discuss the practical aspects and the potential flaws of the system. I believe corporal punishment is a flawed system and there are superior alternatives to discipline, such as expulsion and community service. They offer up a punishment without the abuse.

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Expert Commentary

Corporal punishment in schools: Research and reporting tips to guide your coverage

Two scholars offer guidance on covering school corporal punishment, which can result in serious injuries and has, for years, been used disproportionately on Black students and children with disabilities.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource August 31, 2023

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/education/corporal-punishment-schools-discipline-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This tip sheet on covering corporal punishment in schools, originally published in March 2023, was updated on Aug. 31, 2023 to reflect the number of states that allow the practice and the results of a new study on public support for laws banning physical forms of child discipline. We also added a link to a policy statement the American Academy of Pediatrics released Aug. 21, 2023.

Despite academic studies noting the harms associated with corporal punishment, U.S. public schools use it to discipline tens of thousands of students a year, data from the U.S. Department of Education show .  

Public schools in 22 states reported using physical discipline on students during the 2017-18 academic year, the most recent year for which national data is available. The practice was most common in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today, 18 states allow public school personnel to spank, hit or otherwise inflict pain on children to control their behavior, according to Elizabeth Gershoff , a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Corporal punishment is legal in private schools in all but three states: Iowa, Maryland and New Jersey.

It’s not yet clear whether schools have relied on this type of discipline more or less often amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, school district officials reported a marked increase in student misbehavior in 2021-22, compared with before the coronavirus arrived in the U.S. in 2019. News stories and research studies have documented the pandemic’s widespread effects on kids’ mental and physical health .

When the U.S. Department of Education surveyed public school districts in 2022, 84% agreed or strongly agreed the pandemic has negatively affected students’ behavioral development.

Almost 6 out of 10 public schools reported “increased incidents of classroom disruptions from student misconduct” and 48% reported increased “acts of disrespect towards teachers and staff.” About half reported more “rowdiness outside of the classroom.”

Even if the number of children physically punished at school has fallen in recent years, the issue warrants journalists’ attention considering the serious injuries students sometimes suffer and the fact that Black children and children with mental or physical disabilities have, for many years, received a disproportionate share of school corporal punishment.

The federal government requires public schools and public preschools to report the number of students who receive physical punishment. In 2017-18, public schools physically disciplined a total of 69,492 students at least once — down from 92,479 kids in 2015-16.

That year, public preschool programs, which are often housed within public elementary schools, reported using corporal punishment on a combined 851 children aged 3 to 5 years.

It’s unclear how common corporal punishment is in private schools because the federal government does not require them to report their numbers. Gershoff, one of the country’s foremost experts on corporal punishment, says she knows of no government agency or organization that tracks that information.

She urges journalists to help their audiences understand the various ways schools use physical discipline and its potential impacts on student behavior, mental and physical health, and academic achievement.

“Physical punishment in schools typically involves an adult hitting a child with a two-foot-long wooden board, known euphemistically as a ‘paddle,'” Gershoff writes in an essay published last week in The Hill. “Consider this: If a principal were to hit an adult, say a teacher or a parent, with a two-foot-long board, that person would be charged with assault with a weapon or aggravated assault. School personnel are hitting children with boards that, in any other context, would be considered weapons — and they do so legally.”

The global use of school corporal punishment

The U.S. is the only member of the United Nations that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child , an international treaty adopted in 1989 that, among other things, protects children “from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.” Somalia ratified the convention in 2015 — the 196 th country to do so.

Globally, about half of all children aged 6 to 17 years live in countries where school corporal punishment is “not fully prohibited,” according to the World Health Organization.

But legal bans do not necessarily mean corporal punishment ceases to exist, a team of researchers from the University of Cape Town learned after examining 53 peer-reviewed studies conducted in various parts of the planet and published between 1980 and 2017.

In South Africa, for instance, half of students reported being corporally punished at school despite a ban instituted in 1996, the researchers note.

“There is also concern that school staff and administrators may underreport school corporal punishment even where it is legal,” they write, adding that a study in Tanzania found that students tended to report twice as much corporal punishment as teachers.

While there’s limited research on corporal punishment in U.S. schools, numerous studies of corporal punishment in U.S. homes have determined it is associated with a range of harms. When Gershoff and fellow researcher Andrew Grogan-Kaylor combined and analyzed the results of 75 research studies on parental spanking published before June 1, 2014, they found no evidence it improves children’s behavior.

In fact, they discovered that kids spanked by their parents have a greater likelihood of experiencing 13 detrimental outcomes, including aggression, antisocial behavior, impaired cognitive ability and low self-esteem during childhood and antisocial behavior and mental health problems in adulthood.

Gershoff says children who are physically disciplined at school likely are affected in similar ways.

“There’s nothing to make me think that wouldn’t hold for corporal punishment in schools,” she tells The Journalist’s Resource. “In fact, I think it might be more problematic in schools because of the lack of a strong relationship in the schools between the children and the person who’s doing the paddling.”

Other research by Gershoff offers insights into the types of misbehavior that lead to corporal punishment. She found that public school principals, teachers and other staff members have used physical punishment for a range of offenses, including tardiness, disrespecting teachers, running in the hallways and receiving bad grades.

Some children have been disciplined so harshly they suffered injuries, “including bruises, hematomas, nerve and muscle damage, cuts, and broken bones,” Gershoff and colleague Sarah Font write in the journal Social Policy Report in 2016.

The Society for Adolescent Medicine estimated in 2003 that 10,000 to 20,000 students require medical attention each year in the U.S. as a result of school corporal punishment. The organization has not updated its estimate since then, however.

Black students disciplined disproportionately

James B. Pratt Jr. , an associate professor of criminal justice at Fisk University who also researches corporal punishment, encourages news outlets to dig deeper into the reasons schools in many states still use pain as punishment.

He says reporters should press state legislators to explain why they allow it to continue, even as public health organizations such as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oppose its use. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement stressing that corporal punishment “is not an effective or ethical method for management of behavior concerns” and calling for it to be abolished in all school settings.

News coverage of corporal punishment needs historical context as well, Pratt says. His research finds that school corporal punishment, which is most concentrated in the U.S. South, plays a role in sustaining a long history of racialized violence in the region.

“Tell the story of corporal punishment as a form of social control,” Pratt says. “There is research to illustrate how corporal punishment has been used historically and today.”

In the U.S., enslaved Black people were whipped, as were Black prisoners in the early 20 th century and Black children who went before juvenile courts in the 1930s, Pratt and his fellow researchers write in “ Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools ,” published in 2021 in the journal Social Problems.

For generations after emancipation, white supremacists in the South whipped and lynched Black people to intimidate and control them.

When Pratt and his colleagues examined data on student discipline in 10 southern states in 2013-14 and lynchings between 1865 and 1950, they learned that school corporal punishment was more common for all students — but especially Black students — in areas where lynchings had occurred.

Pratt and his coauthors write that banning school corporal punishment “would help dismantle systemic racism, promoting youth and community well-being in a region still haunted by histories of racial terror.”

Guidance from academic scholars

Both Pratt and Gershoff have lots of ideas for helping journalists frame and strengthen their coverage of corporal punishment in schools. Here are some of the tips they shared with The Journalist’s Resource.

1. Find out whether or how schools in your area use corporal punishment, and who administers it.

Public schools generally share only basic information about corporal punishment to the U.S. Department of Education. School officials submit the total number of students they corporally punish in a given academic year and they break down that number according to students’ sex and race and whether they had a disability, were Hispanic or were enrolled in special programs teaching them to speak English.

Not only does the data lack detail — it does not indicate the type of corporal punishment used, for example, or the type of disability the student had — the information is several years old by the time the federal government finishes collecting it and releases it to the public.

Pratt says journalists can help researchers, parents and the public get a clearer picture of what’s happening in local communities by seeking out more details. To get a sense of how often and how local schools use corporal punishment, ask public school districts for copies of disciplinary reports and policies governing the use of corporal punishment.

Interview teacher union leaders and individual teachers to better understand what’s happening in classrooms and what teachers have seen and learned. Reach out to parents whose children have been disciplined to ask about student experiences.

“We know there’s something there, but how it functions on the ground is what we need to understand,” Pratt says.

Some questions to investigate:

• Which misbehaviors lead to corporal punishment?
• Who administers physical discipline?
• What are children hit with and how many times?
• Where on their bodies are they struck?
• How often have children been seriously injured and how were those situations handled?
• Have local schools been sued over corporal punishment?
• In areas where corporal punishment is banned, have school employees been disciplined or terminated for using corporal punishment?

2. Ask how schools’ use of corporal punishment and other forms of discipline changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students, teachers and other school staff members experienced a lot of stress during the pandemic, as schools struggled to provide instruction and other student services while also monitoring and responding to COVID-19.

At the start of the pandemic, many schools closed their campuses temporarily and taught lessons online. When everyone returned to campus, the situation was, at times, confusing or somewhat chaotic. Many schools discovered they needed to rely more heavily on substitute teachers , who often do not have classroom management training, to fill in when regular teachers were sick, in quarantine or caring for loved ones.

It’s a good idea for journalists to try to gauge how such changes have affected student behavior and discipline. Local school districts and state departments of education should be able to provide more recent records than the U.S. Department of Education. Another source of data: colleges and universities where faculty are studying school discipline.

A September 2022 analysis from the University of Arkansas, for example, shows a sharp decline in several types of student discipline in that state since before the pandemic began. However, the authors write that they “cannot tell if the decline is the result of improved student behavior or inconsistent reporting by schools.”

“Corporal punishment was used [as] a consequence for 16% of infractions in 2008-09 and declined to being used in 3% of infractions in 2020-21,” they write.

Gershoff expects corporal punishment numbers to continue to fall nationally.

“69,000 is still too many kids being traumatized at school,” she says.

There are parts of the country where school officials in recent months have reinstated corporal punishment or voiced support for it, however. In 2022, the school board in Cassville, Missouri, voted to bring it back after two decades of not using it. And a school board member in Collier County, Florida , announced after his election last November that he wanted schools across the region to reintroduce physical discipline.

3. Learn the legal history of school corporal punishment in the U.S.

It’s important that journalists covering corporal punishment understand the history of the practice , including the stance the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have taken on the issue.

Individual states have the authority to create and enforce discipline policies for children attending schools within their borders. Generally speaking, Supreme Court justices have been reluctant to intervene in the day-to-day operations of public schools, so long as educators do not heavily infringe on students’ constitutional rights.

Two Supreme Court cases decided in the late 1970s reinforced public schools’ right to use physical discipline. In 1975, in Baker v. Owen , justices ruled that public schools have the right to use corporal punishment without parents’ permission. In Ingraham v. Wright , decided in 1977, the court decided that corporal punishment, regardless of severity, does not violate the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

In writing the majority opinion for Ingraham v. Wright, Justice Lewis Powell asserts that “corporal punishment serves important educational interests.”

“At common law a single principle has governed the use of corporal punishment since before the American Revolution: Teachers may impose reasonable but not excessive force to discipline a child,” Powell writes.

The Supreme Court did not, however, explain what actions would be considered “excessive.” In 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit established a test for determining that. Since then, circuit courts in several federal districts have required lawsuits challenging schools’ use of corporal punishment to meet that threshold, often referred to as the “shocking to the conscience” test.

Under that very high standard, corporal punishment is deemed excessive if “the force applied caused injury so severe, was so disproportionate to the need presented, and was so inspired by malice or sadism rather than a merely careless or unwise excess of zeal that it amounted to a brutal and inhumane abuse of official power literally shocking to the conscience.”

An example of corporal punishment a U.S. appeals court decided was excessive : A football coach in Fulton County, Georgia, struck a 14-year-old freshman so hard in the face with a metal lock, the boy’s left eye “was knocked completely out of its socket,” leaving it “destroyed and dismembered.”  

An example of corporal punishment an appeals court did not consider excessive : A teacher in Richmond, Virginia, allegedly jabbed a straight pin into a student’s upper left arm, requiring medical care. The court, in its ruling, notes that “most persons are with some degree of frequency jabbed in the arm or the hip with a needle by physicians or nurses. While it is uncommon for a teacher to do the jabbing, being jabbed is commonplace.”

Over the years, legal scholars have written multiple law journal articles examining the Ingraham v. Wright decision and its implications. An article by Michigan State University law professor Susan H. Bitensky , for example, looks specifically at its impact on Black children .

She argues corporal punishment has impeded Black children’s educations, undercutting the commitment to social progress the Supreme Court made when it decided in 1954, in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , that segregating public schools by race was unconstitutional.

“The whole foundation for [the Brown v. Board of Education] holding on segregated schools is a fervent concern that the schools should imbue children, especially black children, with a positive sense of their intellectual worth and should provide them with a commensurate quality of educational experience,” Bitensky writes in the Loyola University Chicago Law Review in 2004.

4. Explain that corporal punishment is a form of social control and that public schools use various types of discipline disproportionately on Black children.

Pratt stresses the importance of putting corporal punishment reports into context.

For many years, public schools have used that disciplinary approach disproportionately on Black youth, according to U.S. Department of Education records . But Black students also are disproportionately suspended, expelled, physically restrained and arrested on suspicion of school-related offenses.

According to the education department’s Civil Rights Data Collection ,  37.3% of public school students who were spanked, paddled or otherwise struck by school employees in 2017-18 were Black. Meanwhile, Black kids comprised 15.3% of public school enrollment nationwide that year.

As a comparison, 50.4% of corporally punished students and 47.3% of all public school students were white.

In public preschools, black children and children with mental and physical disabilities were disproportionately expelled.

Pratt says journalists need to help the public understand how school discipline and other forms of social control such as targeted policing programs and laws prohibiting saggy pants are connected. He encourages reporters to incorporate research into their stories to illustrate how implicit bias and misperceptions about Black children can influence how educators view and interact with Black students.

Research, for example, suggests white adults perceive Black boys to be older than they are and that prospective teachers are more likely to perceive Black children as angry than white children.

“All of [these factors] relate to one another and set the tone,” Pratt says. “This is a collection of harms, and a nefarious one.”

5. Check for errors in school disciplinary reports.

Several news reports in 2021 and 2022 indicate the U.S. government’s tally of children receiving corporal punishment at school may be incorrect.

An investigation the Times Union of Albany published in September reveals hundreds of New York public school students have been physically disciplined in recent years, even though the practice has been generally banned since 1985. State and local government agencies received a total of 17,819 complaints of school corporal punishment from 2016 to 2021, 1,623 of which were determined to be substantiated or founded, the news outlet reported.

“The substantiated cases documented in state Education Department records include incidents where teachers or other staff members pushed, slapped, hit, pinched, spanked, dragged, choked or forcefully grabbed students,” Times Union journalists Emilie Munson , Joshua Solomon and Matt Rocheleau write.

A May 2021 analysis from The 74 , a nonprofit news outlet that focuses on education issues, shows that schools in six states where corporal punishment had been banned reported using it in 2017-18.

Miriam Rollin, a director at the National Center for Youth Law, told The 74 that national figures “are likely a significant undercount.”

“Every school district in the country self-reports its data to the federal government and they’ve long been accused of underreporting data on the use of restraint and seclusion and other forms of harsh discipline,” Rollin told The 74 investigative journalist Mark Keierleber .

6. Press state legislators to explain why they allow school corporal punishment.

Gershoff and Pratt agree journalists should ask legislators in states that allow schools to use physical discipline why they have not stopped the practice.

“Tell the legislative story — who’s legislating this?” Pratt says. “Examine the people doing the work to end [corporal punishment] and also those wanting to maintain it.”

While a handful of members of Congress have introduced bills aimed at eradicating corporal punishment in recent years, none were successful.

In February 2021, U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida introduced the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act of 2021 . But Hastings died two months later, and the bill never made it out of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut introduced the Protecting Our Students in Schools Act in 2020 and 2021 without success. He reintroduced the legislation again in May.

Gershoff notes that many Americans want to ban school corporal punishment. More than 65% of U.S. adults who participated in a national survey on the issue in late 2020 indicated they agree or strongly agree with a federal ban, she and other researchers write in a paper that appears in the September 2023 edition of Public Health. At the same time, only 18% of survey participants believed most other adults feel the same way.

“Americans underestimate support for a ban, which may explain why folks have not been more vocal in calling for a ban even though they agree we should have one,” Gershoff wrote in an email to The Journalist’s Resource.

7. Look for stories in corporal punishment data.

Browse around the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection , which provides data on corporal punishment in public schools at the national, state and local levels as of the 2017-18 academic year. Notice trends, disparities and where there are unusually high numbers of corporal punishment cases.

For more recent data, reach out to schools, school districts and state education departments. Also, ask researchers for help explaining whether and how data from 2017-18 are still relevant.

Here are some data points worth looking into from the 2017-18 academic year, the most recent available at the national level:

• Mississippi led the country in corporal punishment cases as of that year. Public schools there reported using it at least once on a total of 20,309 students. In Texas, which had the second-highest number, public schools corporally punished 13,892 kids at least one time each.
• More than 30% of public school students who experienced corporal punishment in Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina and Wisconsin had mental or physical disabilities.
• North Carolina public schools didn’t administer corporal punishment often. But when they did, they used it primarily on Native American students. Of the 57 students disciplined this way, about half were categorized as American Indian or Alaska Native. Native American kids made up less than 1% of public school enrollment in North Carolina.
• Oklahoma is the only other state where a large proportion of corporally punished students were Native American. Schools there used corporal punishment on a total of 3,968 students, 24.4% of whom were categorized as American Indian or Alaska Native. Statewide, 6.6% of public school students were Native American.
• Illinois public schools reported using corporal punishment on a total of 202 students, 80.2% of whom were “English language learners,” or children enrolled in programs to learn English.

8. Familiarize yourself with academic research on corporal punishment at schools and in homes.

Gershoff points journalists toward a large and growing body of research on the short- and long-term consequences of corporal punishment at home and in schools. It’s important they know what scholars have learned to date and which questions remain unanswered.

To get started, check out these five studies:

Punitive School Discipline as a Mechanism of Structural Marginalization With Implications for Health Inequity: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies in the Health and Social Sciences Literature Catherine Duarte; et al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, January 2023. This is one of the most recent papers examining the relationship between school discipline and student health in the U.S. The authors reviewed 19 studies published between 1990 and 2020 on punitive school discipline, which includes corporal punishment as well as suspension and expulsion. They find punitive school discipline is linked to “greater risk for numerous health outcomes, including persistent depressive symptoms, depression, drug use disorder in adulthood, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behavior, death by suicide, injuries, trichomoniasis, pregnancy in adolescence, tobacco use, and smoking, with documented implications for racial health inequity.” School Corporal Punishment in Global Perspective: Prevalence, Outcomes, and Efforts at Intervention Elizabeth Gershoff. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 2017.

In this paper, Gershoff summarizes what was known at that point in time about the prevalence of school corporal punishment worldwide and the potential consequences for students. She also discusses the various ways schools administer corporal punishment, including forcing students to stand in painful positions, ingest noxious substances and kneel on small objects such as stones or rice. She includes a chart offering estimates for the percentage of students who receive corporal punishment in dozens of countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Jamaica and Peru.

Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. Journal of Family Psychology, 2016.

Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor analyze the results of 75 peer-reviewed studies published before June 1, 2014 on parental spanking, or “hitting a child on their buttocks or extremities using an open hand.” They state that they find “no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm.”

Other big takeaways: “In childhood, parental use of spanking was associated with low moral internalization, aggression, antisocial behavior, externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, mental health problems, negative parent-child relationships, impaired cognitive ability, low self-esteem, and risk of physical abuse from parents. In adulthood, prior experiences of parental use of spanking were significantly associated with adult antisocial behavior, adult mental health problems, and with positive attitudes about spanking.” Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools Geoff Ward, Nick Petersen, Aaron Kupchik and James Pratt. Social Problems, February 2021.

School corporal punishment is linked to histories of racial violence in the southeastern U.S., this study finds. The authors analyzed data on school corporal punishment in 10 states in that region during the 2013-2014 academic year and matched it with data on confirmed lynchings between 1865 to 1950. “Of the counties that reported one or more incidents of corporal punishment, 88% had at least one historic lynching and the average number of lynching incidents in these counties is 7.07,” the authors write. They add that banning school corporal punishment in these states would “help dismantle systemic racism, promoting youth and community well-being in a region still haunted by histories of racial terror.”

Disproportionate Corporal Punishment of Students With Disabilities and Black and Hispanic Students Ashley MacSuga-Gage; et al. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 2021.

When researchers looked at student discipline in the 2,456 U.S. public schools that had used corporal punishment at least 10 times during the 2015-16 academic year, they discovered that children with disabilities were almost two times as likely to receive corporal punishment as students without disabilities. The finding is troubling, they write, considering the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act recommends schools use a behavior modification strategy known as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports when students with disabilities misbehave.

The researchers, from the University of Florida and Clemson University, also found that Black students without disabilities were twice as likely to be physically disciplined as white students without disabilities. Meanwhile, schools were less likely to use corporal punishment on Hispanic students than white, non-Hispanic students.  

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Denise-Marie Ordway

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Debate on Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned at School | Corporal Punishment in India Debate in English

March 7, 2022 by Prasanna

Debate on Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned at School: Good morning, the respected jury members, my respected teachers, my opponents, and my dear friends.

Today, I ________ feel privileged to stand in front of you and express my thoughts on a debate topic that is very close to my heart. The topic is ‘Corporal Punishment should be banned at School’ and I am going to speak in favor of the motion.

You can also find more  Debate Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Dear friends, do you have any idea what corporal punishment is? I know many of you will come up with the answer. Yes, it is a punishment by inflicting physical pain on someone, intentionally. But you also have to keep in mind that it is not only limited to physical pain. It can leave a deep psychological impact as physical punishment also affects the mental health of a child.

If we discuss the negative effects of corporal punishment we can include many to our list. We must understand why a teacher wants corporal punishment. It depends on a lot of factors, starting from the attitude of the teacher and his/her approach towards students. When a teacher is not able to coordinate with some of the students and control them, he finds corporal punishment is the only way to handle the situation. It may also happen that teacher loses his temper in extreme situations that result in corporal punishment.

I am no one to judge my respected teachers. They always hold a special place in all students’ lives. They are our guides and mentors. But sometimes they find trouble in handling certain situations those result in corporal punishment. There may be various reasons by the school authority to justify corporal punishment. But everyone should consider the fact that it can affect the child’s emotions in a very unpredictable way which is not at all desirable.

In this debate on corporal punishment should be banned at school, it is very important to establish the idea that no one has the right to play with a child’s emotions, be it, parents or teachers. Many a time it is noticed that a student withdraws himself/herself from the activities of the surroundings due to set back from corporal punishment in school. There may be a sharp downfall in his mental development at this growing age. So to be on safer side I strongly believe that corporal punishment should be banned at school.

We should never categorize students in our way because every child is different. They have different thought processes, capabilities, and emotions. It is the responsibility of teachers to provide a nurturing environment in school and handle students’ emotions with affection and care. Some students are not as obedient as others; some are not studious as expected but teachers have to find some other way to keep them on track rather than giving corporal punishment.

It has been observed that corporal punishment stops many students to flourish in the way they do so. For example, a student may not be good at studies but find pleasure in some other activities. If he/she is forced to do something with corporal punishment, his natural talents may not find a way to flourish. The child’s mind is very sensitive and corporal punishment may result in serious consequences. He gets frightened even to see others getting punished and may not open up in the fear of rejection. Children are full of energy and often act in a way that may look unusual to the teachers. But to make them disciplined and obedient, corporal punishment should not be used.

We must look at this issue that corporal punishment should be banned at school in much deeper and think of its consequences in long term. The students facing corporal punishment in school may suddenly change to a different personality. Some even try to end life if they feel insulted in front of others. Sometimes such students get humiliated by others in the school environment and take some extreme steps. So we can easily deduce from all of these, that corporal punishment should be banned at school. There may be some immediate positive effects observed by teachers and parents, but in the long run, it hampers the growth of the child.

Dear friends, so far I have expressed my views about the effect of corporal punishment on the mental health of students. But there are other aspects as well, which are equally serious. Yes, I am pointing to the physical injury which is one of the main reasons why corporal punishment should be banned at school. We come across news that some body parts of the child get damaged due to severe physical impact. Many times a student might get hurt seriously by any chance and it causes damage to some parts of his body or organs. There are cases where such damage or injury leads to serious medical complications and even puts life at risk. There were times when corporal punishment was very common in the school environment and teachers felt it was the only way to handle a naughty or disobedient student. But now any sort of corporal punishment should be banned at school. Any action which has hardly any positive reaction can’t be encouraged at any time or any level, especially when it matters to a child’s development and future.

The school authority must ensure that corporal punishment should be banned at school because student’s physical and mental well-being is of utmost importance. It is of most priority that a student who comes to school should get adequate exposure and opportunity for development. Schools are temples of learning and students come here to build a bright future. So it is the responsibility of teachers and other staff to give them the right direction which will enable the nation to prosper.

While supporting the idea that corporal punishment should be banned at school, I also want to mention one important thing that students should not take undue advantage of the absence of corporal punishment. They have great responsibilities as a student to maintain a healthy and disciplined environment in school premises. They should always follow the rules and regulations of the institutions and show respect to teachers. They must follow the guidelines given by teachers because teachers are the mentors who can show them the right way for a better future.

I think I have made sufficiently strong ground to support the opinion that corporal punishment should be banned in schools. At the same time, I must thank my school authority and teachers for guiding me in taking the steps from human beings towards being human.

FAQ’s on Debate on Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned at School

Question 1. How do corporal punishments affect a child’s normal development?

Answer: In the fear of getting punished, a child may not express his creativity or curiosity. This may reduce his/her confidence level and affect normal development.

Question 2. How corporal punishment was justified by some teachers?

Answer: Some teachers believe that fear of getting hurt makes students more attentive to studies and make them disciplined.

Question 3. What is the long-term effect of corporal punishment in schools?

Answer: Various researches show that the children who are beaten or abused will most likely suffer from depression, low self-esteem, and arrogance.

Question 4. What is the origin of the term Corporal Punishment?

Answer: The term Corporal Punishment originates from the Latin word ‘corpus’ which means ‘the body’. It indicates a punishment causing pain to someone by hurting his body.

Question 5. Is corporal punishment effective to stop bad behavior in students?

Answer: Students must be taught how to control behavior and learn to avoid harm out it. Punishment might work to stop bad behavior for a short time but is not effective in the long term.

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Corporal punishment should be banned in schools. Do you agree or disagree?

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The Controversy of Corporal Punishment in Schools

• Categories: Corporal Punishment

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Published: Feb 12, 2024

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Table of contents

Introduction, exploring alternatives to corporal punishment, understanding the adverse impact of physical abuse, examining corporal punishment in public schools, looking towards a solution, works cited.

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Discipline in Schools: Why is Hitting Still an Option?

• Posted April 3, 2024
• By Jill Anderson
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Education Policy
• Education Reform

While most schools in the United States do not report using corporal punishment — the use of pain as punishment — it still impacts tens of thousands of students annually, particularly in states where it remains legal.

Jaime Peterson , a pediatrician and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a call this fall again to end of such practices in school. “As pediatricians, we don't recommend corporal punishment. We know it's not an effective form of discipline. Spanking and hitting a child might help a behavior in the short term. They might be fearful and obedient,” she says. “But in the long term it has a lot of negative consequences. But if it's how you discipline your child at home, parents are often teachers, and school personnel, and school board members that that's a practice in their community at home that seems acceptable. It may be hard to change it.”

It also disproportionately impacts certain demographics such as Black students and students with disabilities.

With 17 states where corporal punishment is still legal today, Peterson urges parents, educators, and policymakers to mobilize and push for abolition of this practice. Calling this form of punishment ineffective, she urges parents and schools to adopt more supportive and positive disciplinary practices that work.

“Saying that it's not allowed isn't going to change a school culture entirely. We don't know what other forms of discipline will come in,” she says. “I think really in the simplest forms when I talk with families, I remind them that our goal is no pain — so that's corporal punishment — no shame, and no blame when we discipline children. No pain, no shame, no blame.”

In this episode of the EdCast, we discuss the prevalence and effects of corporal punishment in schools, and what it’s going to take to end it for good.

JILL ANDERSON: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. 

Jaime Peterson knows corporal punishment is ineffective at disciplining students and doesn't create safe spaces to learn. Yet it's still legal in 17 states around the country and affects tens of thousands of students each year. She's a pediatrician, who along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, renewed a call this school year to outlaw corporal punishment.

Despite advances in education and child welfare, the practice of using physical pain still persists in some schools. Teenagers being paddled, students being left black and blue, and district leaders defending the practice have been reported in the past year. I wanted to know more about the prevalence of corporal punishment and what is standing in the way of abandoning this practice.

When I first heard about this many, many, many years ago, I was interviewing somebody. And they mentioned this is still happening in schools. It was shocking. And to think it's 2024 and a policy recommendation even has to be released telling not to do this is really shocking. 

What is corporal punishment? And what does that look like in schools today?

JAIME PETERSON: Corporal punishment is usually defined as the use of pain on a person's body as a form of punishment. So often defined as paddling, spanking, or the use of other objects as a form of punishment. The good news is that it's really not happening in a lot of schools. I think the most recent data is that 96% of schools in the US do not report any use of corporal punishment. So that feels good. Yet, the answer is not zero. There are still children who are experiencing it today.

JILL ANDERSON: I think the policy statement — and again, this may have changed since it was released several months ago — 70,000 students experience corporal punishment each year.

JAIME PETERSON: You're right. That number is from 2017 from the Civil Rights data collection, which is done by the US Department of Education. And I think in that school year there were close to 51 million children enrolled in public schools. So you're right. 4% of 51 million is close to 70,000 children experienced corporal punishment at least once, which they define as being struck at least once by school personnel during the school year.

JILL ANDERSON: And so where are we at? Because I think it was maybe 18 or 17 states still allowed this. Has that number changed at all?

JAIME PETERSON: They only report this data every four years. So the 2020 to 2021 data is now out, which wasn't available when we released the most recent statement. And the numbers dropped. But you have to remember, what else was happening in 2020? Schools were locked down for COVID. You have to always remember the context within which you look at this data.

So the numbers I think dropped to closer to 20,000 in 2020 to 2021. But children were not in school for a large portion of that time. The in-person time was much lower. So those numbers look better, to your point. There are now 17 states — and I do feel like this is constantly evolving — 17 states where it is still legal.

It is legal in all private schools, except for Iowa, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey. But corporal punishment remains legal in 17 states in the US.

JILL ANDERSON: What would you say is keeping some of these states or most of these states from banning this form of discipline in schools?

JAIME PETERSON: Yeah, I think this was a really interesting thing to learn when we went back to the policy statement, is that a lot of this comes from a Supreme Court case. And I'm not a lawyer. I'm a pediatrician. So I'll use my understanding.

Around 1977, there was a student, James Ingraham, who had corporal punishment inflicted on his body more than 20 times and resulted in the need for medical treatment. And so this was brought to the Supreme Court essentially under the Eighth Amendment for cruel and unusual punishment. But the court decided that because children are not criminals or prisoners that it doesn't apply. 

And so they left the matter to the states, for the states to decide on this issue, and really feel like it's a somewhat private and family-based issue too and that it should be decided at the state level. So the reason it can't just be banned outright is that it is at the level of the states. And then I think some of the other reasons is it's not happening in every state.

So if the rates are reported as zero, does the ban really need to get put in place? And you can sort of look at this map from the Civil Rights Data Collection. You can see the rates are higher along in the South. And so there are certain states where there's more of the cases are happening than in others. There are some great examples.

Colorado, for instance, in 2023 has now banned it. I don't think they had any reported cases in 2017 or 2020. But it is now illegal. So it took two representatives bringing it to the state to pass it.

JILL ANDERSON: But in some states, it is still happening in the past six months or so. And we see cases that have made the news, where you have high school students being given the opportunity to choose whether they get hit or get suspended. And you have a bunch of other cases. So it's definitely still happening in some places. What are the barriers that are keeping it banned?

JAIME PETERSON: I think that's such a good question. I think it really is probably nuanced. But what you can see in the data and the literature is that in places where parents may use corporal punishment, it may be more accepted. So as pediatricians, we don't recommend corporal punishment. We know it's not an effective form of discipline. Spanking and hitting a child might help a behavior in the short term. 

They might be fearful and obedient. But in the long term it has a lot of negative consequences. But if it's how you discipline your child at home, parents are often teachers, and school personnel, and school board members that that's a practice in their community at home that seems acceptable. It may be hard to change it. I mean, other barriers is awareness. This is an opportunity for people to realize it's happening.

That's why we wrote the policy statement again, so that you could have some movement. Just because it's allowed in your state, doesn't mean everyone agrees with it. And I think Mississippi is a great example. They tend to have the highest rates in the past. And they also in July I think of 2019 passed a ban on the use of corporal punishment against any child with a known IEP, so individualized education plan, or 504 plan.

And I think it's really interesting to look at the data from 2017 to 2020, with the COVID caveat, so I think we need to keep an eye on things, that their numbers of all children, not just the children with disabilities, went down who experienced corporal punishment, like a marked decrease.

JILL ANDERSON: So does that mean that something is breaking through or the culture is changing in some way? Is that what we can suspect from that data? Or is it still too soon to say?

JAIME PETERSON: It would be great to hear from their local leaders because I don't know. I think culture is really hard to change. I think if you put a ban in place and people get nervous and follow it, but if you don't come in with alternative parent practices for discipline and support teachers with an alternative, then is that going to be sustained?

JILL ANDERSON: You mentioned there can be long-term negative effects from this type of punishment and discipline. Can you just expand on that? What is the dangers of using this type of discipline in school?

JAIME PETERSON: We know from decades of research that it's not effective in the short term or the long term with educational implications, more likely to have behavioral and mental health issues as they get older, more likely to be violent themselves if they were disciplined with violence. And so you can extend that into the school setting.

So now instead of that data is based on parents, but someone else, another trusted adult using the same form of punishment is tied to the same consequences. And so a lot of the studies we have are across different countries, where they've looked at when you stop it, what happens? Less fighting, better grade point averages, better self-esteem, better relationships with teachers, the same implications as within a family within the school setting.

JILL ANDERSON: People seem very protective in a way of this as a reasonable form of discipline.

JAIME PETERSON: Yeah, I mean, I feel like as a pediatrician I hear that with families. My job as a pediatrician is to help their child grow, and develop, and navigate all of the different stages, toddler tantrums to teenagers, and really help them find the tools to do their very best. It's really hard for parents. They tell me. This is how I was raised. Isn't this the way I'm supposed to do it? And you often look to who raised you.

And so it really takes support from other people to change those patterns and behaviors and to be encouraged to do something different than what's being done in your home, or in your community, or in your family structure.

JILL ANDERSON: Can you talk about how this type of punishment affects specific populations of students?

JAIME PETERSON: What we know is that children who identify as Black are more likely to experience corporal punishment. So they disproportionately represent the number of children who are struck in a school. So they represent, I think, close to 15% of the US student population. But depending on the year, they're in the 30s, somewhere in those 30 percentiles of the number of children receiving corporal punishment. So if you are a Black male identifying child, you're twice as likely to be struck in a school setting. And if you are a Black female, you're twice as likely compared to a white female. And if you're a child with a disability, those rates are higher as well. And then you can imagine intersectionality. What if you're a Black male with a learning disability or a developmental disability? Then you are even more likely to experience it.

JILL ANDERSON: Sounds like we know a lot about how this type of discipline affects kids who've grown up in these environments, where they're beaten or hit. Do we know anything about how this behavior impacts students later in life?

JAIME PETERSON: Yes. And a lot of those same concerns continue with mental health issues, educational outcomes, challenging relationships ongoing with parents and other children. I think often we think about the school to prison pipeline. You can't directly connect it. But a lot of the same impacts. 

So if you're less likely to feel engaged in school, and you're not doing as well, and you don't feel safe, and you're already struggling, even children without disabilities, it's going to have an impact on high school graduation and future educational attainment. And a lot of the studies we reference in the policy statement are sort of these ecological studies of what children report who have had corporal punishment, how they have felt it impacted them because you can't randomly control it.

Our gold standard is a randomized controlled trial. We're not going to randomly control children who receive corporal punishment and those who do not because that would be unethical.

JILL ANDERSON: What would you say is a better form of discipline to use in schools?

JAIME PETERSON: So there are a lot of other evidence-based programs that are better. And I think educators are going to be the people who know the best. As a pediatrician we can sort of cite what we know. But positive discipline models where you have trauma-informed practices, positive behavior interventions and supports, where a behavior that is problematic is approached with an intervention rather than with corporal punishment.

So when that behavior is not present, they receive — you can imagine as your educators a sticker chart, or they meet with a counselor and they get a prize, or they're earning bucks, school dollars to turn it in at the end of the week. Where the behavior is identified, there's an intervention in place and supports. Access to counseling and therapy services within schools.

So if there are other things contributing, so that the behaviors that are causing concerns in the school, we're addressing those as well. And at the same time as you're adopting a new practice, making sure that teachers are getting the support, and school staff and personnel are getting the support to be positive role models. What does it look like to do an alternative discipline practice, so that kids can see that shift happening, that school culture can change, and trust can be rebuilt over time?

Saying that it's not allowed isn't going to change a school culture entirely. We don't know what other forms of discipline will come in. I think really in the simplest forms when I talk with families, I remind them that our goal is no pain — so that's corporal punishment-- no shame, and no blame when we discipline children. No pain, no shame, no blame.

And so you can take away the pain portion, the corporal punishment portion. But you have to make sure it's not being replaced with shame and blame in those settings and that staff have the tools to do things differently, and the support of parents and community.

JILL ANDERSON: When I was looking and doing some research for this conversation about when this is happening, a lot of times it's happening for what are considered minor infractions. I mean, talking back, or not listening, or things that are not what you would maybe consider major infractions.

JAIME PETERSON: Yeah, I think we often think of behavior as communication. What is the reason behind the behavior? So why are they talking back? What's going on in this situation? And who has a relationship to connect with that child, after class, in between class? If it's really not bothersome, it's not going to cause anyone any harm, does it need to be dealt with in that exact moment and with that form of punishment? What are the alternatives?

JILL ANDERSON: You mentioned that a ban isn't necessarily what is going to change the culture of a school. But I'm wondering, what can be done to actually get this to the point, where it is outlawed in these remaining states?

JAIME PETERSON: I think the first step is a ban. The first step is to mobilize parents, and school board members, and legislators. Talk to your representatives and your senators and say, this is a thing that you may not be aware of. We need to petition for this to end. It's the recommendation of many, many groups, educational groups, health groups, psychology groups. 

You could probably cite all of the different collective bodies that support families and children that do not think this should continue. And you start there. And then I think there's sort of grassroots and coalition building to think about, how do you make sure that is implemented well? And that's going to need to take cultural and local contexts into account.

If you're in a state where the rates are zero, get the ban passed so that you're a model for other states. And you apply some pressure. It's not going to come down unless there's a new Supreme Court case brought. But right now, I think states have a lot of power. And I think parents, and teachers, and school districts, and leaders in the states have an opportunity right now.

I think the simplest thing to say is children can't learn when they don't feel safe. We want every child to have an enriching, supportive learning environment and home environment. And when there are other needs, health, or educational, or family, or structural barriers, we need to address those. But this one, this one to me is a no brainer. And I think if you're a parent listening, where do you want your child to be? And when they make a mistake, how do you want them to be responded to?

JILL ANDERSON: Jaime Peterson is a pediatrician and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening. 

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Corporal Punishment in K-12 Schools – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Corporal punishment is defined as a “physical punishment” and a “punishment that involves hitting someone.” In K-12 schools, corporal punishment is often spanking, with either a hand or paddle, or striking a student across his/her hand with a ruler or leather strap. More extreme instances, including the use of a chemical spray and Taser , have also been recorded by American schools. [ 2 ] [ 7 ]

In 2014, 94% of parents with children three to four years old reported that they had spanked their child within the past year, and 76% of men and 65% of women agreed with the statement, “a child sometimes needs a good spanking.” However, a study of the prevalence spanking from 1993 to 2017 found a decrease in the practice from 60% to 39% among parents with 2 to 12 year olds. [ 9 ] [ 33 ]

27 states and D.C. “expressly prohibit” corporal punishment: Alaska, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. [ 32 ]

According to the U.S. Department of Education, “depending on the state, corporal punishment remains legal because state law either expressly allows corporal punishment in at least some circumstances or does not expressly prohibit it. The following states expressly allow corporal punishment in schools: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. Some states that expressly allow corporal punishment also expressly prohibit it for students with disabilities, see, e.g., Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Other states do not expressly prohibit corporal punishment in schools, those states are: Colorado (prohibits only for students with disabilities), Connecticut, Kansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and South Dakota.” [ 32 ]

Over 70% of corporal punishment happens in just four states—Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas—with Mississippi alone accounting for almost 25%. [ 35 ]

There is no federal ban or law regulating corporal punishment, but the practice is prohibited in the federal Head Start program. In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ingraham v. Wright found that corporal punishment was not cruel and unusual punishment and is, thus, allowed in schools. No more recent federal court ruling has been made. [ 4 ]

On Mar. 24, 2023, Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona sent a letter to state leaders saying “if the use of corporal punishment is permitted or practiced in schools and educational settings within your state or district, I urge you to move swiftly toward condemning and eliminating it…. Schools should be safe places where all students and educators interact in positive ways that foster students’ growth, belonging, and dignity—not places that teach or exacerbate violence and fear. Let’s all work together to move away from this harmful practice and to create learning environments that are safe and supportive for all students.” No states appear to have changed their laws since receiving the letter. [ 32 ]

According to the newest available data, more than 109,000 students (down from 163,333 in the 2011-2012 school year) were physically punished in more than 4,000 schools in 21 states during the 2013-2014 school year, including some students in states where the practice is banned. Rural, low-income, black, male students were more likely to have experienced corporal punishment. Children with disabilities also experience corporal punishment at higher rates than other students. [ 4 ] [ 9 ] [ 12 ]

Some school districts have very specific rules for the punishment. Central Parish in Louisiana states that three swats with a paddle “approximately 20 inches long, 4 inches wide, and not exceeding ¼ inch in thickness” is the appropriate punishment. However, other districts do not offer guidance. Daryl Scoggin, the superintendent of the Tate County, Mississippi, school district stated: “It’s kind of like, I had it done to me, and so I knew what I needed to do. I guess it’s more that you learn by watching… We don’t practice on dummies or anything like that.” [ 4 ]

Internationally, 65 countries ban corporal punishment in all instances, including at home. Those countries include Zambia and Mauritius, both of which most recently passed laws in 2022, and Sweden, which passed the first ban in 1979. Most countries ban corporal punishment in some instances. According to the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, 15 countries do not ban corporal punishment in any instances and 29 countries allow corporal punishment (including caning) as a sentence for minors who have committed crimes. [ 6 ] [ 30 ] [ 34 ]

Should Corporal Punishment Be Used in K-12 Schools?

Pro 1 Corporal punishment is the appropriate discipline for certain children when used in moderation. Occasional use of corporal punishment for serious behavioral issues is appropriate because time-out or taking away a toy may not work to correct behavior in a particularly willful or rambunctious child. The negative effects of corporal punishment cited by critics are attached to prolonged and excessive use of the punishment. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] LaShaun Williams, founder of childcare group Sitter Circle, states, “there are some children who like to push their limits. Those are the children who may require a pop. Knowing your child is the key to nailing down the most effective forms of discipline…. Today’s disrespectful youth have shown what happens when necessary spanking is forgone.” [ 24 ] Read More

Pro 2 Corporal punishment sets clear boundaries and motivates children to behave in school. Children are better able to make decisions about their behavior, exercise self-control, and be accountable for their actions when they understand the penalty they face for misbehaving is comparable to their actions. [ 24 ] Harold Bennet, President and Dean of the Charles H. Mason Theological Seminary, states, “children need to understand boundaries and I think that children need to understand that there should be punishments… in direct proportion to the improper behavior that they might demonstrate.” [ 16 ] Some experts state that corporal punishment prevents children from persisting in their bad behavior and growing up to be criminals. [ 27 ] Read More

Pro 3 Corporal punishment is often chosen by students over suspension or detention. When given the choice, some students frequently choose corporal punishment because it is a quick punishment that doesn’t cause older children to miss class or other activities, or younger children to miss their valued time on the playground. The child’s education is not interrupted and make-up work is not required for missed class instruction. [ 26 ] A former high school senior at Robbinsville High School in North Carolina, stated she chose corporal punishment over in-school suspension when her phone rang in class. Her principal, David Matheson, stated, “Most kids will tell you that they choose the paddling so they don’t miss class.” [ 26 ] Read More

Con 1 Corporal punishment can inflict long-lasting physical and mental harm on students. Children who have been physically punished are more likely to have problems with aggression and attention. [ 15 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] Studies have shown that frequent use of corporal punishment leads to a higher risk for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, stress, and other mental health concerns. Children who experience corporal punishment are more likely to relate forms of violence with power, and are, therefore, more likely to be a bully or abuse a partner. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] Read More

Con 2 Corporal punishment creates an unsafe and violent school environment. The American Academy of Pediatrics says corporal punishment “may contribute to disruptive and violent student behavior.” [ 11 ] Children who experience corporal punishment are more likely to hit or use other violence against people in order to get their way, which places other children at risk for increased bullying and physical abuse and teachers in potentially violent classrooms. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry states, “[c]orporal punishment signals to the child that a way to settle interpersonal conflicts is to use physical force and inflict pain. Such children may in turn resort to such behavior themselves.” [ 10 ] Read More

Con 3 Corporal punishment is an inappropriate punishment that harms the education of children. Corporal punishment has been banned in U.S. prisons and military training, and animals are protected from the same sort of punishment in every state. [ 14 ] Students who experience corporal punishment in kindergarten are more likely to have lower vocabulary scores in fourth grade and lower fifth grade math scores. [ 17 ] According to the National Women’s Law Center, “harsh physical punishments do not improve students’ in-school behavior or academic performance. In fact… schools in states where corporal punishment is used perform worse on national academic assessments than schools in states that prohibit corporal punishment.” [ 14 ] Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Should corporal punishment be used in K-12 schools? Why or why not?

2. Should federal laws about the use of corporal punishment be established? Why or why not?

3. Should corporal punishment be allowed in certain circumstances? Which situations? Why or why not?

Take Action

1. Evaluate an opinion article from a former educator about the use of corporal punishment .

2. Learn about the laws governing corporal punishment in the United States.

3. Consider the Southern Poverty Law Center and the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies report on corporal punishment inequities .

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. national senators and representatives .

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Legal and Public Policy Strategies to Reduce or Ban School Corporal Punishment

• First Online: 01 January 2015

Cite this chapter

• Elizabeth T. Gershoff 5 ,
• Kelly M. Purtell 6 &
• Igor Holas 5  

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Psychology ((ACFPP))

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Internationally and within the U.S., school corporal punishment is on the decline both in frequency of use and in its legality, trends which suggest the practice will be abandoned and/or abolished in all countries in the near future. For the 19 states in the U.S. in which school corporal punishment remains legal, how will bans come about? There are three main mechanisms for such a change in educational practice: legal remedies, changes to public policy , and advocacy and educational efforts. The first two will be discussed in this chapter; the third will be considered in Chapter 8 .

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Gershoff, E.T., Purtell, K.M., Holas, I. (2015). Legal and Public Policy Strategies to Reduce or Ban School Corporal Punishment. In: Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14818-2_7

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Essay on “Corporal Punishment in Schools” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Corporal punishment in schools.

The term,’corporal punishment’ means ‘physical punishment’.it is a kind of punishment that affects the human body adversely. It could be in the form of beating, thrashing or even whipping. Thus, punishment of this kind is physical torture to a student and should be condemned and stopped immediately. Moreover, such kind of punishment may sometimes physically impair a student for his whole life. Psychologists are of the opinion that such a punishment can affect a student mentally, for a very long period of time.

In India corporal punishment has become a common feature in schools.several incidents of physical assault have been reported in the news papers for instance,a student of class xii from a popular school in Udaipur and a student from Delhi Municipal Corporation school died due to the beating they received from their school teachers. This is shocking. In another incident, a class xi student in Ahmedabad accused a teacher of having hit him so hard that he suffered a temporary loss of hearing.  Making a student kneel down or stand for hours, pinching and slapping are all set to be banned under plants to widen the definition of corporal punishment in school.

The national commission for protection of child rights has suggested a code of conduct for teachers in school. The main feature of the code is a total ban on corporal punishment. Some states in India have banned corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is just another from of physical violence and has no place in an enlightened society.

However there are numerous instances of milder punishment that go unnoticed. There is enough evidence to suggest that teachers, including those at elite schools, physically and verbally intimidate children some of whom could be as young as five years old. There is unfortunately no national law banning cruel or unusual punishment in schools. The national policy on education merely says that corporal punishment is not permissible.

Discipline is a must for students in schools and colleges. However enforcing it though corporal punishment is highly objectionable and rather inhuman. This kind of punishment was generally practiced during the medieval period, and is now outdated.moreover this is not the right procedure or technique to discipline a student.

Teachers should realize that children at the school level are at an impressionable age. If they are subjected to such kind of physical torture, they may develop a fear to approach or meet a teacher, or even attend school. They will never respect and love their teachers which is very essential for the overall development of student personality. This is because a guru or teacher is role model for a student. He must set an example for his students through his behavior and actions. He must deal with is students patiently, advising and guiding them to excel in every sphere of life such as academic, sports, music and various other extracurricular activities.

The supreme court states that children are not to be subjected to corporal punishment in schools and they should receive education in an environment of freedom and dignity, free from fear. The national policy on education directs the school authorities to take necessary action in the matter,so that this evil practice affecting the physical and mental health of children can be nipped in the bud.

Corporal punishment does not have any positive effect on a student.it in stead worsens the situation.for instance, a student who is very naughty,or least interested in studies,when subjected to corporal punishment,may become more aggressive in nature. He may even leave the school and studies. Such development may be disastrous for a child future and for the society. Corporal punishment may even cause permanent physical is orders in a child. For example her slapping upon the ears can make him totally deaf for the rest of his life. Harsh whipping and canning of the hands and legs can damage the bones and muscles.

There are some people who would say scolding of schoolchildren and verbal intimidation should not be outlawed. This argument is flawed. Verbal abuse could be as damaging and humiliating for children, especially the younger ones, as physical punishment. Parents often complain to school authorities against abuse of their children in school.but they are too often cowed down to silence by school authorities. In such a situation, there is no alternative but for the state government to intervene.

To conclude it must always be borne in mid that teaching is one of the noblest professions where one imparts knowledge tooters. The teacher must consider his students as his own children and treat them as lovingly and caring as possible. He should praise a students achievements, and help him to overcome his shortcomings by motivating him to pursue his interests. A teacher should be there to guide a student to become responsible educated and well groomed citizen of the country. While handling students it must always bekeptin mind that they are like flowers. They have to be nurtured with great care to help them blossom an spread their fragrance.

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Why Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned (Essay Sample) 2023

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Why Corporal Punishment Should Be Banned

Corporal punishment should be banned since numerous studies have proved that when pain is inflicted on an individual, it does not necessarily change his or her behavior. Corporal punishment has over the years been used at home and in school as a means of influencing behavioral change among young people. At home, parents tend to punish their children, especially when their behavior is deemed as arrogant or when they engage in naughty activities. In addition, teachers have used corporal punishment in schools to influence behavioral change among students and also influence them to work hard in their academics. However, evidence reveals that corporate punishment is a form of violence which has little influence in motivating positive change and it may even lead to rebellion both at home and in school.

Corporal punishment has been banned in different countries since evidence has shown that it may in fact impact negatively on positive development of young people. There are different forms of corporal punishment, including slapping, pinching, or beating using different objects such as sticks, belts, and so on. It is important to note that any method that is used to inflict pain on another person can promote violence, especially when the victim resists or defends himself. Furthermore, corporal punishment and any other form of violence have been prohibited in various schools in America since authorities regard it as illegal. Prohibition of corporal punishment was first implemented in numerous private schools, with the policy also being implemented in homes where parents are asked to utilize other methods of instilling positive behavior on their children. There are alternatives to corporal punishment that have been recommended by psychologists, and which parents should always follow in order to instill discipline among their children.

Research studies have argued that children tend to learn when they imitate the behaviors of their elders. This implies that parents, teachers and other adults act as important role models who influence the kind of behaviors that are adopted by children. Therefore, when children are exposed to corporal punishment or any other of form of violence, they may end up using violent tendencies against their colleagues. It is evident that the main aim of elders is to bring up children who are respectful, trustworthy, and people of integrity. Therefore, corporate punishment should not be used as a rationale of developing good behavior since it can have negative repercussions, including low self-esteem and increasing the risk of depression and even suicide. Scholars are of the opinion that corporal punishment tends to affect children differently, but the negative results usually outweigh the positive factors.

Another important consideration is the fact that corporal punishment does not have any direct relationship with educational curriculum and it should therefore not be used as part of disciplinary method in schools. What this simply means is that corporal punishment does not add any educational value to young people. Therefore, teachers should use other useful means of instilling discipline instead of punishments that have a negative physical consequence. Teachers should also collaborate with parents, especially when the behavior of a child is deemed to be irreparable and beyond the standards of the learning institution. It is from this perspective where children can be exposed to success stories of individuals who were respectful and pay attention to their leaders since discipline can be taught as one of the most effective examples of success. All forms of corporal punishments have been opposed by numerous professional associations since there are more efficient techniques of instilling discipline instead of beating people.