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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?
Early paddle in Utah pioneer school shown.
Splintered Kansas paddle with initials of names from the turn of the century in Kansas. Alas, only described.
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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?
Baltimore American, Jun 14, 1887
Source: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0a … 38,2754764
About School-Marms
Comparing the old with the new
Wherein the modern school mistress differs from her predecessors of the past generation – some of her characteristics – an army in Chicago. (From the Chicago Herald)
[Item found by American Way]
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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?
Paddle. Hardin-Simmons Student Pranks. Who do you think would be Dougharty especially by judging from the penultimate link in the student prank picture?
Wilmot Dougharty
October 25, 1948. Bare bottom fraternity paddling.
Freshman Mistake.
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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?
Borger Daily Herald (Texas) Tuesday 3 May 1938, page 4, col. 6.
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/ … 7177/m1/4/
Crack! Goes the paddle
Around the main entrance of the High School was a large crowd, appearing at first, highly amused, and second, very interested.
I looked into the ring. Inside were several boys, some of them dressed very queerly. Faces were smeared and daubed liberally with lipstick. Some of them wore trousers cut off above the knee and all of them sucked baby’s teething rings, most industriously.
The secret? I’ll he right mean and tell you. It was (and is) the initiation to the “B” club. The initiation in order last week and this week for the lettermen of ’36 and ’37, respectively.
Oh! The woeful looks of the suffering boys as they bend to the approved position for a paddling. And the mournful glances they cast at the maiden of their aspirations as she passes silent, but extremely interested, for they cannot speak to each other for the full term of initiation!
I cannot put on paper how side-splittingly funny it is to gaze upon Sherman Sullivan’s mild, cherubic face as he straightens from a resounding blow and contentedly sucks the rubber ring in his mouth he says he expects to cut his “toofies” sometime next week.
Roswell Raber was very happy when Mr. McIntosh banished his dress and ladies’ hat. (A certain lady here stated her opinion that if the boys had to wear frocks they must wear petticoats too, and please, please, hide their none-too beautiful lower limbs in hose).
More I have no space to relate, but I assure you the present candidates have “blood in their eyes” for the 1938 squad, I suggest that the to-bes start taking a daily-dozen licks, to toughen up, or “train” in preparation for next year.
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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?
Professionally Made Paddles. 22″ x 3.5″
Old Hickory Paddle Co of Danville Indiana.
Court Case challenge. King of Swing of Bunker Hill, Indiana.
When Warren Davis bought the Old Hickory Paddle Co. in 1988, he just thought it would be fun to make fraternity memorabilia.
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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?
If we can understand why the school paddle was and is more prevalent in the southern states of the USA we may better understand why the school paddle is favoured the USA. The southern preference and prevalence is likely to have something to do with the people who settled in the South, and their way of life.
The Southern United States was initially mainly settled by herders from sparsely populated Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England and the West Country.
New England was mainly settled by cropping farmers and workers from densely populated South East of England and East Anglia.
Mobile animals are easier to steal than immobile crops. Asserting ownership of land by occupation is also more difficult for herders. In the absence of strong government and its associated law enforcement the southern settlers felt insecure. They had to be ready use of force to defend their property and way of life. Later, the need to control slaves compounded the southern reliance on force.
The desire to protect their threatened way of life lead in part to the civil war. The aftermath of the defeat compounded pre-existing concerns and reinforced the belief in use of force to control others, and those who broke the rules. It also compounded a suspicion of outsiders and outside beliefs.
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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?
Some interesting points KK. There are other non structural reasons too. The South was late in extending the orderly rule of law , in some cases well into the 1890’s, and where there was no law but the peripatetic ‘Marshall’ communities needed to be tightly structured to survive.
Life was hard, and dangerous. Yes these were in some cases frontier states, but also they were quite dangerous places, not only because of gun law, but even going into the back yard and you could meet a snake or scorpion, and down by the river an alligator. . This also intended to make religion stronger and more assertive, and it is no co incidence that pro paddling states are also often pro death penalty.
Modern social democracy hasn’t found the south an easy bedfellow, what with Jim crow laws, and the history of d segregation.
No the sociological factors are extremely important , and explain why Paula and her crew can’t get a real foothold.
Also teachers in the South have a less flexible style. True of parents as well. Issues are right or wrong – no middle ground. And you can soon as a child slip over the border from curiosity to sass. Also, especially in Texas, a substantial German influence hardened social attitudes, as these were strong protestants.
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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?
I believe the use of the paddle in US schools was largely due to the influence of parents.
There is no evidence that school paddling was derived from fraternity practice although it is possible graduate teachers who had been fraternity members had some influence.
Hazing and initiations in USA colleges occured from the earliest times. The paddle seems to have been a late arrival. If we could understand when and why this happened it might help understand school use better.
JOURNAL OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 91:4 Winter, 1998, page 233-
Harmless Pranks or Brutal Practices?
Hazing at the University of Illinois, 1868-1913 Winton U. Solberg
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/ishs-1998wi … ter233.pdf
Rites of passage mark important transitions in life, and soon
after the first universities arose in Europe it became customary to
subject new students to some form of initiation. In German universities
in the seventeenth century, for example, pennalism was the
name given to an oppressive system of bullying neophytes (pennal
was a slang term for freshmen, who carried with them a pennal or
pen-case for use at lectures). In England the system under which a
senior boy could compel a junior boy to perform vexatious tasks was
called fagging, a word that came into use in the mid-1820s. Hazing is
the term employed to describe the familiar collegiate ritual in
America. The Oxford English Dictionary defines hazing as “a sound
beating, a thrashing,” and as “a species of brutal horseplay practiced
on freshmen at some American Colleges,” and it records the Harvard
Magazine in 1860 as the first to use the word to describe “the absurd
and barbarous custom of hazing which has long prevailed in the college.”
Early American colleges imported the custom of fagging, and
in the early nineteenth century hazing replaced it as a method of initiating
and disciplining freshmen. Hazing was a product of the class
system, whereby all students who entered at the same time were considered
members of a single class throughout their college course.
The conditions of college lifea fixed curriculum, the recitation system,
the college dormitory, and antagonism between faculty and students
strengthened class ties, and class rivalry opened the way for
what Henry D. Sheldon called “numerous perversions.” Describing
the hazing of freshmen by sophomores in the nineteenth century,
Sheldon noted various degrees of the custom that ran the gamut from
practical jokes and tricks to serious and cold-blooded offenses.
During the first month at college the freshman was the likely victim
of annoying pastimeshe was jeered at, his room was liable to be
invaded at all hours, and his person and belongings formed the
means of amusing his tormentors. More elaborate vexations followed.
One of the most common was “smoking out,” a practice in
which a group of sophomores seized and closed up a newcomer in
room, filled it with smoke, and attempted to sicken their victim.
Meanwhile, the freshman might be compelled to perform such nonsensical
acts as making speeches, singing songs, dancing, or reciting
the alphabet backwards. “Salting the freshman,” enjoyed at one college,
consisted in placing salt and water on the chairs of freshmen in
chapel; at another college molasses replaced the salt and water. More
serious, a group of sophomores might single out an individual freshman
whom they considered odious, gag and blindfold him, and
hurry him away to some desolate locality, where they practiced various
indignities upon him, such as cutting off his hair and branding
his body with indelible ink or smearing it with paint, tossing him in
a river or putting him under a pump for a considerable period, and
leaving him in a remote place or a cemetery with a gag in his mouth
and his hands bound behind him.
On an average, Sheldon believes, not more than two or three
such affairs occurred each year in a typical college, and probably not
more than about 15 percent of any sophomore class engaged in hazing
of the type described. The majority, however, exhibited only a
passive opposition to the practice, and the governing boards of the
colleges tried without success to extirpate this initiation rite. One
reason was that students refused to inform on their classmates, but
the real reason for the persistence of hazing lay in the conservatism
and reverence for tradition that marks youth. “That freshmen had
always been hazed seemed sufficient cause why hazing should be
continued.”2 Hazing was a form of aggressive behavior that spread
across the land. When James Burrill Angell became president of the
University of Michigan in 1871, hazing and other disorders were
accepted conduct of students. The practice was difficult to control
because it took place outside class hours and frequently at night.
When Thomas C. Chamberlin became president of the University of
Wisconsin in 1887, hazing was a serious problem, although, as the
university’s historians write, “perhaps no worse … than elsewhere at
the time.” At the University of Missouri in the 1890s the hazing of
unpopular or obstreperous individuals occurred, but it never struck
any deep roots. At Indiana University hazing was one manifestation
of interclass rowdiness, and the practice of “scalping” (hair cutting)
freshmen had its day. One beleaguered sophomore held fifty freshmen
at bay with a shotgun when they tried to enter his room to give
him a second scalping. At the University of Iowa President George
MacLean, who took office in 1899, was less offended by such adult
offenses as entering saloons or drunkenness than by the adolescent
practice of hazing. In 1901 authorities suspended ten sophomores for
the remainder of the year for abducting the president of the freshman
class and holding him captive for two days. Hazing was well
entrenched at both military service academies. At West Point it was
practiced with methods that were “violent and uncontrolled,” and
Douglas MacArthur’s refusal to be a tattletale nearly ended his career
as a cadet.3
How to deal with hazing was part of the larger problem of
discipline that troubled colleges throughout the nineteenth century.
Officials tried various approaches in an attempt to maintain order
and create an environment conducive to learning. Neither harsh
paternalism nor an appeal to the honor of students proved successful.
Hazing was difficult to manage because it shaded off by slight
degrees from the practical joke to the serious crime. It was not merely
a colorful aspect of college life but a stage in the evolution of higher
education that helps us understand the conditions under which
American students were educated.4
etc.
_______________________________________
Henry D. Sheldon,
Student Life and Student Customs (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1901),
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 have just noticed that judicial, prison, military, fraternity and school paddling (or reports thereof) all seem to have started at roughly the same time in the USA – towards the end of the nineteeth century and in the early years of the twentieth. Slave paddling was much earlier. Was there a common cause? Possibly, improved communications and literacy allowed the more rapid spread of new ideas and practices at this time.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jv … 48,4275163
Manufacturers and Farmers Journal – Jul 15, 1895
Camp of Rhode Island Militia Quonset Point, R. I., July 11, 1895.
Sleep last night was out of the question for the full moon made the camp so beautiful that only a craven with no music or poetry in his soul would retire to his tent and deliberately shut out the fresh air and the moonlight. The boys made up for their quietness on the previous nights, and altogether there was considerable excitement of one kind and another.
[. . .]
The new company in the 1st Regiment, F of Wakefield, has 46 men, all taking their first year in camp. The other companies have been seriously debating the question of subjecting them to the process known as paddling. A small dose of this is always administered to every new recruit, but as the members of the company are all rugged looking men, there was hesitation about starting the operation. They have been hazed more or less by the other companies, and last night started out to get even. Over by the big flagstaff, at the lower end of the parade ground, was a sentry. Quite early in the evening he received an order from “headquarters”, said headquarters being in one of the company tents, to hoist the flag at moonrise and lower it at moon-set. When the moon rose, all red from the horizon, and gradually turned to silver, the sentry was in a stew over the flag, which, it is needless to say, was not hoisted.
[. . .]
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 following item relates to the discussion of “sociology” above. The paddle in this case is likely to be that used on slaves by judicial order.
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bi … 00114.2.17
The New Orleans True Delta, of September 10 contains the following account of some proceedings in the interior of Louisiana.
A friend who has just arrived from Lafayette parish, informs us that on Saturday morning last the Vigilance Committee of that parish were summoned to assemble and proceed to a place called Bayou Tortue, about fifteen miles west of Vermilionville, where an encampment of outlaws had been formed, the ringleaders of which had challenged them to battle. Accordingly, the law and order men of the parish, who had long suffered from these depredators, who had robbed, plundered, passed counterfeit money and murdered with impunity, quickly gathered, and, taking a piece of artillery with them from the village of Vermilionville, started for the rendezvous of the outlaws.
At 9, a.m., on Saturday, about 500 well equipped mounted men suddenly appeared before the entrenched camp of the boastful defiers of the laws, where they found them in full force, with the Bayou well guarded, and a house in the centre of their position loop-holed, and otherwise thoroughly prepared for enduring a siege or resisting a storming party. The flag of their fraternity also floated defiantly in the breeze, and until the Vigilants had formed their order of battle, and unmasked their cannon, all looked as if the defence would be obstinate and sanguinary. The sight of the big gun, however, struck terror into the hardened hearts of these outlaws, and sauve gui peut [a stampede] suddenly appeared to animate the warriors. Their number was about 150, many of whom having horses, managed to make their escape, but seventy of their force fell into the hands of the Vigilants.
Immediately a court-martial was formed, consisting of two Vigilants from each company, to whom the question was submitted whether the prisoners, notorious evildoers, should suffer death or be paddled. By a majority of two, it was decided to inflict the paddle punishment, and thirty-six hundred blows were equally administered [50 swats each].
One fellow committed suicide, by shooting himself, to avoid the paddle. Subsequently, five others of the gang were found dead from gun-shot wounds. Our informant says that the news of this affair caused the greatest pleasure among all the honest and decent inhabitants of the parish where it occurred, and the adjacent Attakapas parishes, which have long suffered from the depredations of the powerful gang.