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KKxyz3,59957
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?
So far, I have not been able to establish when spanking with a paddle began to be common in US schools. The word paddle (verb, to spank with a paddle) would have entered the language at this time if it was not already in common use from a non-school context.
The big Websters dictionary, published in 1913, does not contain the word. The word was use in newspapers before this time, as revealed in a number postings above. Presumably, the dictionary was not up to date it takes a long time to compile a big dictionary.
I have now searched other smaller dictionaries published before 1913 and found the following.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/139 … %3Bseq=634
The Universal self-pronouncing dictionary of the English Language (based on Webster et al.) 1908
Page 604
pad-dle (‘l), v.i. to row slowly; play in the water : v.t. to propel by paddle or oar ; to spank : n. a short broad oar ; an oar blade ; one of the floats for propelling a steamship.
However, the word does not occur in:
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/139 … %3Bseq=331
The American dictionary of the English language : Collier, 1900. Page 311.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433069 … %3Bseq=246
White’s People’s Webster; a dictionary of the English language, 1899. Page 238
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433081 … %3Bseq=262
Websters Common School Dictionary, 1892, Page 246.
The above suggests the word, and perhaps the act, may have become common around 1900, give or take.
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?
Potential sources of primary and good quality secondary information on the origin of the US school paddle
1. Contemporary newspaper and magazine reports.
2. Dictionaries and learned discussions of the origin of words, local idiom, etc.
3. Teachers’ professional journals
4. Articles in learned journals discussing education or punishment.
5. Books including teachers’ manuals, histories with specific discussion of CP, and biographies, fiction, etc. with passing mention of CP.
6. Contemporary official reports and statistics
7. Legislation, regulations, bylaws, etc.
8. Minutes of official meetings of legislators, inquiries, school boards, etc.
9. Law court records
10. Records of any type dealing with non-US or non-school use of the paddle that might give insight into US school use.
11. Other?
The accessible records are probably biased with material from the more progressive and larger identities over represented. Such are more likely to have kept and published their records than the under resourced, conservative or insular.
Only a small proportion of the interesting material is easily accessible online.
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holyfamilypenguin4,5593
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. Thanks for an exhaustive source list.
Colored girls were lashed and paddled decades after slavery in court. Here are two examples. While I’m sure some white girls may have found themselves in this situation the record shows otherwise.
Maysville, KY
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … /seq-1.pdf
Daily public ledger., August 13, 1906
PUBLICLY SPANKED
Three Colored Girls Whipped Order of Judge Whitaker ByLizzie Moore, Fanny Washington and Kate Bower, a trio of colored girls, whose ages range from fifteen to seventeen years, were arrested Friday night for street walking and general misconduct. One of their favorite amusements was butting
into and jostling ladies off the sidewalks and street crossings. In meting punishment to the culprits, Judge Whitaker pursued a mere effective and salutary way than the old method of sending them to Jail. He sent for the mothers of the wayward girls, and after explaining the nature of the offense and the penalty attached thereto, he gave them the choice of spanking their daughters in the presence of an officer, whose duty it was to see that it was well done; otherwise, the severest penalty of the law would be inflicted. They agreed to do the spanking. The mothers and offenders retired to a roomin rear of the Police Courtroom, and each one in turn was placed across a table and an improvised paddle made from a salt barrel stave was wielded by the parent in a manner that left a deep impression en both mind and bodythat will remain for several days to come.Though severe, it is quite likely that the warm application will have a beneficial effect. They now take their meals standing.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … /seq-4.pdf
The St. Louis Republic., July 19, 1901 Kansas City, Mo.
A negro girl was publicly whipped in the court of aKansas City Justice of the Peace this morning.Little Thomas, 13 years old, was foundguilty of stealing a small amount of moneyfrom a. neighbor. When Justice Walls prepared to sentence her, the mother beggedthe Court to order her sent to his whippingpost, urging that the result would be better. This whipping post in Walls’s court ls famous as a local institution, but until nowno woman has ever been bound to it. At the request of the mother. Justice Walls consented to let the girl go, provided the mother administered a sound lashing.The girl was bound, and the mother, armed with a whip, thrashed her until the Judge ordered her to desist.
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KKxyz3,59957
The US School Paddle A Product of the “Progressive Era” and Female Influence? Mentions of the school paddle in written material begin around 1900. There are mentions of the school switch, hickory rod, etc. before that time and also of the slave, prison and fraternity paddle. There are news reports of serious injury or even death. It seems likely the paddle was introduced as a milder and less injurious device to placate those opposed to CP in schools and to protect children from harm. However, so far I have found no documentation to support this supposition. The deliberations and decisions of school boards do not appear to be accessible online at the moment which makes it hard to determine what happened and why. The spread of the school paddle makes it likely there was widespread discussion at the time, probably in the 1890’s.Reference material A short history of US education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_periodExcerpt: Education in the United States had long been a local affair with schools governed by locally elected school boards. As with much of the culture of the United States, education varied widely in the North and the South. In the New England states public education was common, although it was often class-based with the working class receiving little benefits. Instruction and curriculum were all locally determined and teachers were expected to meet rigorous demands of strict moral behavior. Schools taught religious values and applied Calvinist philosophies of discipline which included corporal punishment and public humiliation. In the South, there was very little organization of a public education system. Public schools were very rare and most education took place in the home with the family acting as instructors. The wealthier planter families were able to bring in tutors for instruction in the classics but many yeoman farming families had little access to education outside of the family unit.
The reform movement in education began in Massachusetts when Horace Mann (1796 1859) started the common school movement. Mann advocated a statewide curriculum and instituted financing of school through local property taxes. Mann also fought protracted battles against the Calvinist influence in discipline, preferring positive reinforcement to physical punishment. Most children learned to read and write and spell from Noah Webster’s Blue Backed Speller and later the McGuffey Readers. The readings inculcated moral values as well as literacy. Most states tried to emulate Massachusetts, but New England retained its leadership position for another century. German immigrants brought in kindergartens and gymnasiums, while Yankee orators sponsored the Lyceum movement that provided popular education for hundreds of towns and small cities.
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Campaigns against corporal punishment : prisoners, sailors, women, and children in antebellum America (Before 1861)
By Myra C Glenn
Publisher: Albany : State University of New York Press, ©1984.The antebellum crusade against corporal punishment: origins and leaders —
Reform campaigns against corporal punishment: institutional concerns —
Reform campaigns against corporal punishment: cultural concerns —
Wife beating and the limits of the anti-corporal punishment crusade —
A victim’s perspective: nineteenth-century seamen and convict writings on punishment —
A house divided: public debates over corporal punishment, 1843-1852 —
From theory to practice: the decline of corporal punishment in antebellum America.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of … ted_States
Excerpt: The Progressive Movement began in the 1890s and lasted through the 1920s; the most active period was 1900 1918.
Dissatisfaction on the part of the growing middle class with politics as usual, and the failure to deal with increasingly important urban and industrial problems, led to the emergence of the Progressive Movement in the 1890s. In every major city and state, and at the national level as well, and in education, medicine, and industry, the progressives called for the modernization and reform of decrepit institutions, the elimination of corruption in politics, and the introduction of efficiency as a criteria for change. Leading politicians from both parties, most notably Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, and Robert LaFollette on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan on the Democratic side, took up the cause of progressive reform. Women became especially involved in demands for woman suffrage, prohibition, and better schools; their most prominent leader was Jane Addams of Chicago (1860 1935). Progressives implemented anti-trust laws and regulated such industries of meat-packing, drugs, and railroads. Four new constitutional amendmentsthe Sixteenth through Nineteenthresulted from progressive activism, bringing the federal income tax, direct election of Senators, prohibition, and woman suffrage.
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Corporal punishment in American education : readings in history, practice, and alternatives
Author: Irwin A Hyman; James H Wise
Publisher: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1979.Part I. Introduction —
1. An overview / Irwin A. Hyman and Eileen McDowell —Part II. Historical perspectives —
2. Social sanctions for violence against children : historical perspectives / Gertrude J. Williams —
3. The Children’s Petition of 1669 and its sequel / C.B. Freeman —
4. Discipline in the good old days / John Manning —
5. The abolition of corporal punishment in New Jersey schools / Donald R. Raichle —
Etc.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
American Education A History, 4th Edition
By Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr., Wayne J. Urban
2008
RoutledgeChapter 5. Class, Caste and education in the South: 1800-1900
Chapter 6. Beginning of a modern school system: 1865-1890
Chapter 7. Organizing the modern school system: Education reform in the progressive era, 1890-1915
Chapter 8. Completing the Modern School System: American Education, 1915-1929.Corporal punishment receives only passing mention
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David Macleod, The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890-1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1998).
Emphasizes a tug of war between different conceptions of childhood, from the varied experiences of farm children and working-class urban youths to the Progressive reformers’ ideal of a sheltered childhood.
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Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era
William J. ReeseA number of mentions of corporal punishment. Women had a big influence on educational and other reform in the four northern cities investigated: Kansas City MO, Milwaukee WI, Toledo OH and Rochester NY.
This book was noted before http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/m … 1287777344. I have seen it in snippet form only. It only briefly mentions corporal punishment but covers the period from 1890 to 1920 when the school paddle may have become established.
The Age of the Child (History of American Childhood Series)
by David I. MacLeod (Professor of History at Central Michigan University)
At the dawn of the twentieth century, progressive reformers optimistically heralded the coming age as “the century of the child.” They proclaimed that every young person should have a sheltered and dependent childhood in which they were nurtured by a loving mother and supported by a hard-working father. Yet across much of the United States rival modes of childhood prevailed. Farm children and working-class urban youths shared the cramped housing and restricted incomes of their elders, often serving as vital contributors to the family economy. To the dismay of reformers, city children often lagged behind in school and yet displayed precocious independence on the streets.
The Age of the Child vividly reinterprets much of progressive reform as a tug-of-war against rival forms of childhood. More than a history of reform, though, this is a story of varied lives in an era that is just now passing out of living memory. It tells how gender, age, race, ethnicity, social class, and region, as well as urban or rural residence not only limited or enhanced opportunities, but sometimes determined life or death. Macleod examines how changing economic, social, and cultural possibilities could dramatically alter children’s life chances. Unlike many histories of childhood, this volume carefully distinguishes between the experiences of boys and girls. Distilling recent scholarship in social history.
The Age of the Child goes beyond the traditional emphasis of progressive-era historiography on the urban North and gives equal weight to rural southern and midwestern childhoods.
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?
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015019 … =%3Bseq=97
Classroom organization and control by J. B. Sears.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin company [c1918]
Page 75-. Chapter VII School Punishments
________________________________________
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015062 … %3Bseq=285
High school administration by William Adelbert Cook.
Baltimore, Warwick & York, inc. 1926
[Acceptable practice has changed.] Page 267
Corporal punishment has been discontinued completely in about half the high schools. The right to inflict it should be reserved because that practically eliminates the necessity of inflicting it. Some principals secure its infliction by the parents, although the superiority of home discipline over school discipline is about as well established as the superiority of home instruction over school instruction. Moreover, if the parent can discipline for the principal, why can not the principal discipline for the teacher? Truly the argument is weak. As a last recourse before expulsion the flogging of a boy will help in one case out of three or four, and it surely does little harm in the cases which are lost anyhow. A senior boy recently asserted that if he had been shaken two months earlier he would have graduated. The writer personally knows of two cases in one school, one involving a boy, the other a girl, in which the course of the principal was currently commented upon with favor six to eight years afterward. Burial of lost patients by expulsion or repeated suspension is a fairly common road to safety, but it does not sound like professional or social service. Educational people have a right to be alarmed over the combination of super-soft pedagogy and startling criminality in America. A cause-and-effect relation may not exist between the two, but some sort of alibi would be refreshing to us. A sound whipping given to a small boy in the earlier years of high school is much less severe or dangerous than suspension for a week. Age is a very apt criterion for determining the kind of punishment, but it is the mental rather than the chronological age that governs. Little boys and girls are eligible for a switching, even if they have succeeded in entering the high school; babies will require a spanking occasionally regardless of long trousers.
Note also page 262-3
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015062 … %3Bseq=281
However, when a student’s conduct is menacing to the school, it may not be practicable to defer all action, but the direct issue may be avoided by requesting the student to leave the room. If he refuses to leave, he should be ejected by force and with scant ceremony. To that rule there can be no exception. A physical clash between a teacher and a student is unpleasant enough, but its effect may be salutary, and it is far better than open defiance of the authorities of the school. Aside from persistent refusal to obey a simple command, the only other case in which presumption favors immediate, decisive action, is intentional, personal impertinence to a teacher. The proper penalty for that brand of impudence is a slapped face, the slapping to be done in the quickest possible time without warning, by the person offended. This counsel sounds strenuous, and if followed may bring an indignant patron to the school. Nevertheless it will be sustained by the board, if it is the board’s policy to sustain proper discipline at all. It is taken for granted, of course, that no rule against corporal punishment has been adopted by the board.
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?
US schools were and largely still are managed at a local level. Elected school committees of lay people rather than trained educators have ultimate control of each school or school district.
There were and still are big differences between states and within states.
Conjecture: Adoption of the paddle as the preferred implement for corporal punishment was decided locally at different times in different places. The decision was either made by teachers to ward off concerns from lay people, or was a school committee decision imposed on local teachers. There are few accessible written records of the change because of the way the decision was made.
The move towards the paddle was largely driven by the desire to reduce objections to corporal punishment by reducing the marking if not its severity
Only in relatively recent times have regulations been made concerning the size of the paddle and how it is to be used. These are the result of concerns about injuries inflicted, and over harsh punishments.
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Guest
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 suspect , KK, you are right on the button with that explanation. the paradox of the paddle is that used appropriately it is very effective but does not mark anything like the cane : used excessively, on the wrong bits of the body particularly ,it is very dangerous as can be seen from its classification by homeland security as a ‘prohibited item ‘ for the purposes of carriage on flights in hand baggage. The bruising from an excessive paddling can be horrendous.
This is my reservation about its use , and why I think Renee’s ‘rules’ or similar are essential
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KKxyz3,59957
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?
As remarked previously, there are big differences between the different states in the USA. It may therefore be more fruitful to attempt to study the history of the school paddle in a selected state or states rather than in the USA as a whole. Texas is one of the great paddling states so would seem to be a suitable candidate.
Currently, Texas state law does not provide guidelines for corporal punishment policies. However, Section 37.001 of the Texas Education Code, requires that a school district’s student code of conduct provide options for disciplining students. Each school district decides independently whether to allow corporal punishment as an option and the conditions under which corporal punishment may be used.
There are over 1,000 school districts in Texas, with non-paddling Houston the largest. The school districts are independent of local territorial government and do not necessarily match city boundaries. Over 100 of the school districts mention paddling in their online school handbooks, according to corpun.com.
It is unlikely there was ever top-down regulation of CP in Texas schools although court decisions may have influenced practice. The individual school districts need to be studied.
The older, larger and more prestigious schools made have established precedents or models for other school districts to follow. Unless contemporary newspaper reports can help, or someone has already done the research, it will be necessary to access and search the school district records to determine when they first authorized or attempted to regulate CP. This is a daunting task for someone living far from the state.
Perhaps CP has discussed CP practice in a history of the Texas education?
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holyfamilypenguin4,5593
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 Stop looking for the earliest. I have found the earliest use of the shingle. 
Please don’t tell me you don’t enjoy my sense of humor. 
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KKxyz3,59957
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?
American Way’s amusing posting immediately above provides further evidence that suggests that shingles might have been the precursors of paddles, and this was known in both New York and Seattle in 1912. On its own, it is light weight evidence but it does add weight to the existing evidence.
Now, something of s similar nature from the great state of Texas:
The Portal to Texas History: http://texashistory.unt.edu
The Yucca, Yearbook of North Texas State Normal School, 1908, F. P. Bowman, editor. Page 135.
Professor B. “Now, will you, Mr. G., tell me what the Board of Education is?”
Mr. G. “Yes Sir. It is the shingle which the country professor uses for a paddle.”
A preliminary cursory examination of early Texas records has not found any discussions of school CP. This may suggest it was not a contentious issue. The domestic paddle may have been used in the early schools as a matter of course without comment or regulation.