The earliest mention of the school paddle in the USA 26

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

KK I am sure these are things you probably have thought of but I remember how helpful I was with the word shingle. So here are some of my conjectures derived from recent rumination after my just prior posting. A custom with hazing was to have an underclassmen “slave” for them. An adult striking and adult involves some degree of consent. Assume the position and say thank you may I have another. There may be a slave connection.

An adult striking a child in a domestic setting involves an intimate connection such as over the knee and direct contact of hand on bottom with younger children.

In a frontier school situation there were always sticks and switches available. Paddles are made from wood of course and that’s why they were often referred to as shingles. By history tours and matching the dates of the schools it might illuminate the chronological advent of the paddle in the classroom.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

My Family school history in the USA goes back to two connections – 1876-1895 in Deadwood, south Dakota, and 1910-1940 in Gardiner, Maine. Other family had lived in Utah and Louisiana , but not with children.

The oral history and a few postcards etc preserved, bring me to understand a strap was used in the school in Deadwood , and paddle in the years in Gardiner. The Deadwood school was what in the UK we would call a ‘Dame ‘ school, run entirely by schoolma’ams

It just commentary, proves nothing of course . I’ll put soem pictures if they will copy on the TWP thread.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

The difference between USA and UK school practices may be due in part to the great influence of the so-called “public” schools in the UK, and how schoolboys were indoctrinated by penny dreadfuls and stories about school life. They helped establish proper “British” school boy attitudes to CP and other matters.Some of the boys went on to be teachers, school governors and education officials.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 … 0910200201

HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 1991, VOL. 20, NO. 2, 77-94

“Boys of Bircham School’: The penny dreadful origins of the popular English school story, 1867-1900

JOHN SPRINGHALL, History Department, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

Popular school fiction can be found in the much-despised (by middle-class adults) boys’ weekly periodicals or magazines referred to dismissively as ‘penny dreadfuls’ from about 1867.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

Hi KK

Thanks very much for that reference. It pointed to two other relevant papers in the same journal, though it is hard to tell what the second is about.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 … 0701607882

HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 2008, VOL. 37, NO. 2, pages 253-275
The Experience of Corporal Punishment in Schools, 18901940

Jacob Middleton

Corporal punishment was an important part of the educational experience of many children educated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has often been assumed that it was an uncontroversial and widely accepted means of maintaining school discipline. This article questions these assumptions, using autobiographical accounts produced by individuals educated between 1890 and 1940. Working from common themes in these accounts, it presents a reconstruction of how corporal punishment was viewed by the child. Whilst educationists of the period encouraged the sparing and impartial exercise of school discipline, the accounts demonstrate how, in practice, the use of corporal punishment was often seen as arbitrary or unjust. Corporal punishment was, as a result, to become a major source of tension between pupils and teachers within the early twentieth-century school.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 … 0601171401

HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 2007, VOL. 36, NO. 2, pages 191-211
Caught Napping: Images of Surveillance, Discipline and Punishment on the Body of the Schoolchild

Eric Margolis & Sheila Fram

The authors’ research is concerned with the use of visual imagery as data to examine schools and schooling. In attempting to develop knowledge further by incorporating the visual in educational research, they draw on a hybrid mix of disciplines including sociology, ethnography, history and the humanities. Many scholars and historians writing about the history of education emphasize written texts (e.g. formal curricula, school board minutes); photographers and visual artists depict the physical arrangements, postures and facial expressions of bodies within socially constructed spaces. Currently, some historians are attempting to open up new methodologies and theoretical perspectives for the inclusion of images as data, while others remain ambivalent about the legitimacy of visual data of educational history. In this article, the authors discuss images of three lessons that the body is subjected to as essential elements of schooling: surveillance, discipline and punishment. They argue for the usefulness of the visual as data informing historical and sociological imaginations and research.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

KK When I read the words surveillance, discipline and punish I thought of this structure.

CLICK

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

That’s a remarkably true representation of the Benthamite architecture of the Panopticon American way , congratulations. Many of the ‘representations ‘ diverge far more from the diagram , but in this the framing of each prisoner is unique to the guards….the elements of separation and estrangement , representing non corporeal control of the body cf Foucault .

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

Middleton, an independent academic based in London, has an interest in school CP in England. He has published or been reported a number of times, including in corpun.com.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/m … 353502325/ (25 Oct, 2010)

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2361022

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2622922

And hot off the press: http://www.historytoday.com/jacob-middleton/spare-rod

Concerning “Images of Surveillance, Discipline and Punishment” the authors seem to be trying to take advantage of “a picture being worth a thousand words”. Unfortunately, without much success although it is early days.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

Thanks KK, an interesting selection of articles.

For me, it just demonstrates how calling yourself a historian or academic is intended to give the impression that your writings carry authority. In practice, the authors have as many opinions and prejudices as the rest of us and, although we might take note of their genuine research, their views have no greater value than our own.

The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.

Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?

Apologies KK for missing your earlier reference in this thread to the first Middleton paper, “The Experience of Corporal Punishment in Schools, 1890-1940”

No mention of the paddle but in it he gives some quotes, reminiscent of some that I have read here:
‘punishment must be severe enough to make the desired impression’ and if teachers used the cane they should ‘cane hard’
These were quoted from “Boys and their Management in School” by H Bompas Smith M.A. Head Master of Queen Mary’s School Walsall (1905). See http://ia700508.us.archive.org/12/items … 781978.pdf

However the “Caught Napping …” paper does quote “paddled” as a verb. It says:
The first reform school in the United States, the “House of Refuge”, was constructed in New York City in 1825 ….
The Refuge’s first manager noted the following infractions and punishments in his journal for 1825-1826.
“E.D., paddled, with his feet tied to one side of a barrel, his hands to the other …
J.M. … neglects her work for play in the yard, leg iron and confined to House …
Anne M.: Refractory and does not bend to punishment, put in solitary.”

I also found two pictures used in that paper in other places on the web:
http://www.printsoldandrare.com/education/index.html
http://www.ancientfaces.com/photo/a-vil … or/1170402

Just an aside from todays local “news”. The relevant event occurred in Macclesfield, England.
The headline was “Woman guilty of racism for calling Kiwi an Australian” and quoted from:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article … alian.html