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 Western Journal of Education.
San Francisco, January 1901
The Rebellion of the Teachers ALICE CHURCH, EUREKA, CALIFORNIA.

Mrs. Johnathan Snawtle had been in her young days a school teacher, and an
exceptionally fine one, if we take her word for it. When she started out on her
pedagogical career, she possessed the usual amount of scholarship of the normal
school variety, and an inborn conviction that it was her mission in life to reform
the educational world.

[. . .]

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.l0053334 … %3Bseq=200

Now, teachers are the most long-suffering, patient, putting-up-with-everything
class of people on the face of the earth, but there is authority somewhere for the
statement that even a worm will turn if trodden on past all endurance; and one day.
after hearing of a fresh installment of what seemed to them Mrs. Snawtles misdirected
energy, they held an indignation meeting. They all attended this meeting,
including the superintendent and the principals of the different buildings. It was a
secret session, but when the teachers emerged, the ten, each of whom had a Snawtle
in her class, looked quite cheerful.

The next day, the eldest Snawtle, a boy of eighteen years, appeared in class
having as usual made no preparation for his work. Not a book had he opened
and not a question could he answer. When his teacher inquired why he had not
learned his lesson, he replied, looking impudently at her with the selfsame smile
which had become a chronic part of his mothers facial expression. that he had not
learned them because he had not wanted to. Whereupon the teacher ordered him
into the principals office.

Young Snawtle was surprised at this. He had been accustomed from his youngest
school days to being made a special subject of prayer on the part of his teacher.
He had been sweetly reasoned with, talked to, and generally entreated to attend to
his own mental well-being. Everything that pedagogical ingenuity could devise
had been done to get him interested in his lessons, but without avail. There was
only one thing in the world that this boy had ever dreaded enough to make him
amenable to reason, and that was a good thrashing, such as his father had occasion-
ally bestowed on him, when his mother was away from home on business. He had
no fear of the school authorities, however. Long before. while yet a small boy, he
had carefully perused the pamphlet containing the rules of the school department,
which stated that any teacher found guilty of whipping any pupil whatsoever,
should be summarily dismissed. Corporal punishment as a means of moral persuasion
in the Sandspit schools was strictly forbidden.

With that smile still on his face, he followed his teacher into the office. No
explanation took place, just an intelligent look passed between teacher and principal,
and the latter rose and rang the bell for the janitor. Have you those tools
ready? he asked, when the man appeared.

“Yes, sir,” replied the janitor, and he left the office for a moment reappearing
with a good-sized cracker-box and a big wooden paddle. He stood the box on end
in the middle of the oor, and the principal commanded Snawtle to get over it.
Snawtle demurred, but the chief was a big, strong man, and he looked very deter-
mined. He told the boy that if he did not get over, he would put him there, and
Snawtle got over. Then the principal picked up the paddle and prepared to go to work,
but the teacher took it from his hand saying she wanted the satisfaction of using it
herself. For fteen minutes she thoroughly enjoyed herself, while her superior
officer stood by to see that Snawtle stayed over the box as long as she wanted him to.
When the boy got back to his classroom, he took his books in a manner very sub-
dued, and went to work without being told. The smile had faded from his face
before the teachers muscles gave out; for, although she was a little woman, she
could be very energetic.

Meanwhile, the nine other Snawtles had been catching it at their schools. All
of them had been paddled once, and one, a fifteen year old girl who had been an
unmitigated nuisance in every class she had ever entered, had been over the box
three times.

The scene at Snawtle’s at noon, when the ten of them got home and compared
notes, and related experiences, can be better imagined than described. Mrs. Snawtle
was for a short time, speechless with indignation. She kept them all home that
afternoon, and started out for the schools.

The superintendent opened his office door just two inches, told her he had no
time to talk to her, than closed the door and bolted it on the inside. The teachers
all acted in the same way, except that they kept their doors open long enough to
remind her that there was a clause in the school law relative to parents creating
any sort of disturbance in the presence of the school.

She called on the trustees and found them unsympathetic. The chairman was
actually rude to her. “No ma’am,” he said, “it wont be no use for anybody to put
up any fight on them teachers. The board is proud of ’em. We dont care a darn
about their breakin’ the rules, were goin’ to meet in special session this evenin’ to
rescind them rules, and pass some that’ll be better adapted to the sort o’ young ones
we seem to have now-a-days. And every teacher that has ever had to put up with
one 0′ your kids in her school is a-goin’ to get her salary raised ten dollars a
month.” Words cannot paint Mrs, Snawtle’s rage and disgust. And when she dis-
covered that the school board had set the fashion, and the whole town showed
indications of following suit, when even the Mothers’ Society went back on her,
she announced her intention of leaving Sandspit. She took her whole family and
went to Cape Nome.

The teachers rejoiced to see her go, but they expressed heart-felt sympathy for
the colony at Nome.

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 caption reads “Meeting the board of education” but it is clearly a barrel stave that is being used in this staged photo, one of a stero pair.

The stave seems far too large and too difficult to group for practical and safe use.

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?

A cylinder is being used in this home spanking. The man may be holding a spare.

[“grip” not “group” in the barrel stave paddling comment immediately above.]

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?

Words enter the language after the idea, object or action referred to by the word comes into existence. There is usually a delay before dictionaries and reference books recognise the word.

The disciplinary paddle was not recognised by the 1913 big Webster’s dictionary, as noted previously. Big dictionaries took many years to compile so often omitted recent words in common use at the time of publication.

I have reported above a number of recognised dictionaries and dialect word lists, both with and without the disciplinary paddle, published in the decades before the big Webster’s. The following is an important reference work without the paddle.

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015038668334

Universal dictionary of the English language; a new and original work presenting for convenient reference the orthography, pronunciation, meaning, use, origin and development of every word in the English language together with condensed explanations of fifty thousand important subjects and an exhaustive encyclopaedia of all the arts and sciences profusely illustrated, ed.

by Robert Hunter (English ed.) and Prof. Charles Morris (American ed.) With the assistance of eminent specialists.

Published: New York, P. F. Collier, 1897

The disciplinary paddle, and paddling were clearly well known in the South before 1897. It is also likely that flat objects such as barrel staves, shingles, butter paddles etc. were used for corporal punishment in the North before this date. It is likely the words spread north and possible the practice of using a specially-made implement too.

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?

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