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?

When the paddle was first employed as an instrument of correction is a question that interests me but I cannot be of direct help. Its root in slavery is one possible reason it was instrument of choice. The ideal slave was a subservient one and on auction day the sight of welts was a dead give away that they were auctioning damaged goods. Paddle marks were easier to hide and would dissipate by auction time. Erotic literature had the paddle used on black woman and it was used on children because it was consider less vicious. A case can be made that there was a carry over to children taught in a classroom.

Page three of a previous post is well worth re-reading. by male slave holders. In Catholic schools classroom yardsticks were used while a strap was used in the nearby public school. Principals were mostly men and it was an extension of a belt IMO. No proof again but a reasonable surmise. The cane seemed a carry over from the British Isles in the principals office of the Irish order of sisters and there were dowels like canes.

The switch and the hickory stick were used in rural communities. The stick was more often used in the classroom.

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?

WIDOW WHIPS SCHOOL HEAD; Ohio Mother Lashes Principal Who Had Paddled Her Son
The New York Times May 17, 1922 (Hyperlink)

This brief news item is of interest in that it implies the paddle was well known in 1922 as no explanation is offered as to what was done to the boy. Interestingly, the 1913 edition of the Webster does not mention paddle as a verb.

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?

I apologize for posting under the wrong thread twice in a row. I’m having a hard day, having just posted the knout and bastinado under the wrong thread. What did I do? I searched instrument of correction and responded to my previous misplaced postings.

Spanking in other languages was the question. Remember the used Romance Languages (FRIPS). French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. I’m told that the Romanians, often the gypsies, moved about the Roman Empire so speak the closest to Latin. Can anyone affirm or debunk this? Is it apocryphal? It’s off topic but how many times have I been taking to task for that? So be it.

Instruments of correction like martinet and ferule are named and used in the European continent.

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?

WHIPPING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS (21 year old girl beaten with hickory rod – editorial)

For a half century or more the courts and law books have been saying in a routine way that a school-teacher has the right by law to inflict moderate chastisement upon disobedient or disorderly pupils. Some of them have…

New York Times March 16, 1879,<font></font>

Teachers in many countries seem to have had a propensity towards severe corporal punishment. They seemed to have had a largely free hand until education first started to become compulsory towards the end of the 19th century and parents started to object to excesses. The paddle may have replaced the switch because it is less likely to leave marks.

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 just have a gut feeling paddling as the majority option is going to date to post WWII.

There’s very little mention of anything pre-War other than whipping(which I take to be the fabled hickory stick, which I seem to remember from Mark Twain. I also remember Harry Morgan as Col Sherman Potter in MASH(TV series) mentioning the woodshed & whippings & that was set in the early 1950’s.

Steve