-
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?
In July 2011, above I attempted to reconstruct from snippets an anti-spanking poem featuring the shingle, published in 1907 . I have now found the full text.
A Ban on Spanking.
Put away the shingle,
And the hairbrush, too,
Instruments that tingle
Baby through and through,
Do not use the slipper,
For we have the word
Doesn’t do to whip her
Spanking is absurd!
Put away the shingle
When the boy is bad,
Do not use a single
Stick upon the lad.
Never let him feel the
Warmth that it will bring,
But go and conceal the
Horrid spanking thing!
Put away the shingle,
Do not be a crank;
Never intermingle
With the folks who spank,
If the spud is needed,
Willie to command,
Let this rule be heeded:
Never use your hand!
Put away the shingle,
Never any more
Make small Jimmie tingle
Looking at the floor.
If you must denounce him
Till he will obey,
With no shingle trounce him,
Try some other way.’
Put away the shingle,
When the boy you’d warm,
Just recall this jingle
Get wise and reform.
There are times the lad’ll
Not do as he’s bid.
But suppress the paddle
Never spank the kid!
[Los Angeles Express.]
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 previously suggested that the paddle may have been favoured in USA schools because of the greater influence of parents there than in countries where educational professionals had greater sway. US school CP may have been more based on the practices of the home rather than those of the great schools of Europe. Also, in the USA there may have been a greater need for school punishments not to leave marks that might result in complaints from parents.
The following paper describes the struggle between parents and schools for control, a struggle that continues today.
_____________________________________________
Carl F Kaestle. (1978)
Social change, Discipline and the Common School in Early Nineteenth Century America
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9 (1) 1-17.
Selected excerpts:
Historians interested in childhood and education are well aware of the sharp rise in educators’ attention to discipline and character formation in the nineteenth century, especially in the decades of school reform after 1840. This article relates the urgent concern for school discipline to other developments in early industrial America. It comments upon two explanations offered recently and proposes a broader explanation which at once supports and revises the functionalist framework as it is applied to the history of education.
[. . .]
School discipline was not a new problem in the nineteenth century. Adults have always found that children lack restraint and discipline. Socialization in all societies involves an introduction to the sober world of adult responsibilities. Because schools are run by adults and deal with large numbers of children, they have always been characterized by procedures and sanctions considered necessary not only for the immediate learning situation, but also for training children for appropriate adult roles.
Yet there seems to have been a quantum shift in the purposes, methods, and importance of school discipline in nineteenth-century America. In the eighteenth century, teachers ruled by virtue of their ascribed position, backed by the threat and frequent exercise of the rod. They commonly said that they taught “morals,” but the moral education of ordinary children in schools was not a mission of the state and was not a matter of public debate. By 1840, in contrast, the authority of teachers and the advisability of corporal punishment were widely discussed. Although a breakdown of family discipline had often been alleged in previous periods, it was now related to a pressing need for enhanced school authority. School reports emphasized discipline for orderly procedure in schools as well as for the production of model citizens. New pedagogical schemes, such as the highly regimented monitorial system and the graded school, emphasized that the structure and procedures of schools would themselves shape appropriate character. School committees urged skeptical teachers to use moral suasion instead of corporal punishment, but they generally defended corporal punishment against parental challenges and harangued parents about the necessity of supporting teachers’ efforts to shape children into industrious, frugal, temperate, subordinate, trustworthy, brave, clean, and reverent adults.
There is a danger of indulging in an overly romantic conception that industrialization turned a carefree eighteenth-century world into a regimented clock world; thus it is important to reiterate what was new in this situation. The work ethic, which equated industry with righteousness, antedates the nineteenth century. What was new in the content of nineteenth-century school and work values, as other scholars have emphasized, was an increasing emphasis on punctuality; but otherwise the work ethic did not originate in, and was not much affected by, industrialization.
There were, however, four significantly new developments in moral discipline in the nineteenth century:
moral discipline, like other educational goals, became increasingly associated with schooling;
second, the state, through local school committees and fledgling state education agencies, strenuously asserted an increasing authority for teachers over children, in competition with parents;
third, after centuries of virtually unrelieved schoolroom recitations and birch-enforced authority, the pedagogics of Joseph Lancaster and Johann Pestalozzi, which aimed at internalized discipline through proper motivation, challenged traditional practice;
fourth, accompanying these developments, public discussion of the relationship between personal morality and social order greatly increased, spurred by the social strains of the period and witnessed in the proliferation of new periodicals and government agency reports.
[. . .]
In general, parents in nineteenth-century America wanted schools to take custody of their children, and they wanted schools to train their children in basic skills and attitudes. The eventual price that they paid was the loss of authority and control over their children’s education. The trade-off was made. The state successfully exerted its right to discipline all children in values that served, first and foremost, the operational necessities of the school, but that also served the social leaders’ image of appropriate adult behavior and the parents’ image of appropriate childhood behavior. Despite the apparent grounds for consensus, this differentiation of function and shift of authority to the school ultimately produced not just different, but substantially contrary goals.
Elements of antagonism between school and family did not end with a new nineteenth-century equilibrium; they persist today. Clearer boundaries did not necessarily eliminate conflict, but in some ways merely prevented its expression. Compulsory attendance laws, the professionalization of teaching and administration, the development of pedagogical expertise, and the construction of fortress-like urban schools-these all helped to insure that parents would interfere less: they did not insure that parents would feel happier or be better served.
[. . .]
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?
Life (Magazine) 2 July 1951 contains the following image as part of its series on Early America as recorded in the folk art of the time. The image dates from before compulsory education and before the paddle became popular. Drawings and images of all kinds, including cartoons and those in advertisements, can be useful in understanding the past.
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 Victoria Advocate, Monday 4 February 1980, page 9D. (Victoria, Texas, USA)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=8 … 67,1193251
The spanking needs of a robust 9th grader must surely be much greater than of a kindergarten student. The news item makes no mention of an age and size appropriate selection of paddles.
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?
There are many biographies, school histories, official documents, news reports, and works of fiction mentioning or detailing canings and “floggings” (with a birch) at the great British “public” schools. These documents provide much information for researchers. I have found no similar material for great American schools, or indeed much about such schools.
Were there any great schools in the US? What are they? Have any histories or reminiscences of the schools been published containing mentions of SCP?
List of the oldest public high schools in the United States
[British “Public” schools were privately owned schools open to the public provided only parents could pay the fees and were of a suitable social class. Most private schools of the time did not accept outsiders. Publically owned (government and community) schools came later as did “preparatory” (primary or elementary) schools. In the early days you had to be able to read and write before you went to school. SCP was well established at high school level before primary schools became common.]
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?
Paddling has spread from the USA in recent times (did it?), mainly, it seems, to fundamentalist “Christian” schools. See for example the item found by American Way: Bundaberg private school, Queensland stops paddling.
Why did this school adopt the paddle rather than a more traditional Australian / “British” implement? Did they just adopt, lock, stock, paddle and barrel a Christian school model from the USA? How did King Solomon’s “rod” become a paddle? The suspicion is they want to hurt without leaving marks. Was not leaving marks the main concern in the USA in earlier times?
-
dominum1,407
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?
Why did this school adopt the paddle rather than a more traditional Australian / “British” implement? Did they just adopt, lock, stock, paddle and barrel a Christian school model from the USA?
More or less, yes.
The school in question is one of a reasonably large number of ‘parent controlled Christian schools’ (precise terminology differs from place to place and from time to time, set up in Australia over the last few decades – it’s actually rather younger than most. They tend to be, as you say, ‘fundamentalist’ Christian, and the religious beliefs involved tend to be those that have been imported from Churches based in America, rather than the older established Christian denominations which came to Australia via Europe. Most private schools in Australia are ‘religious’ at least on paper – that is they are officially affiliated with a Church or other faith groups – but the older schools, particular the elite schools, have tended to become progressively more secular over time, far too secular in many cases for parents of more fundamentalist beliefs (ie, those who don’t want things like evolution being taught). To set up these new schools, the parents tended to draw on US sources for help – as Australia’s largely secular curriculum didn’t meet their needs, they imported American curriculum, for example. As experienced teachers in the existing private school sector did not want to throw away their seniority and there were no reciprocal agreements between the old sector and the new, it was also often hard to source a Principal from within Australia, so in many cases, at least initially these PCC schools imported an American Principal. Who brought American methods.
They also tend to be run on rather different lines than more traditional private schools – as businesses, even if they are not-for-profit in nearly all cases. That is partly out of necessity – they lack the depth of resources that older schools may have available.
There may, in some cases, be a belief in these schools that the paddle is a ‘safer’ method of corporal punishment and that may be part of the reason some adopted it, but it really does seem to be more a matter of importing ideas and practices from America. It’s important to note that under the 1983 ‘Human Rights’ document that outline the conditions under which corporal punishment can be legally used in Australian schools, the paddle is not an approved implement while the cane and strap are. I have heard on the grapevine that that is part of the reason why BCC has amended its policy at this point – because of the legal risks they’ve been running for over a decade.
I should mention that relationships between the PCC schools and the rest of the private sector are, over time, improving – and cross contact between the groups is becoming more commonplace. Some of the earliest and most successful PCC schools, are even moving away from those roots to become more mainstream private schools, because that’s where the reputation is, and the prestige is – and because they are ‘parent controlled’, in places where they were the only private school (not uncommon), over time parents who are less interested in religion and more interested in good quality private education, have gradually taken over.
-
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?
Prior posted. School Board Paddling.
-
HH2012836
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’m hoping this may shed some additional light on the quest for the origins of the paddle. I have come across an item called a “Palmaterio” (ebay item number 290931403658 while it’s there). It is alleged to be a slave paddle from the 1800’s and here is what the vendor describes about it. Although it’s not really clear if this was used only in Brazil or also in America … yet it’s quite interesting.
<em>”Extremely rare relic of slavery. Used to beat the palms of the hands which are particularly sensitive. That fact led to the punishing of school children in this country (</em>seller is in Michigan<em>), by smacking their opened palms with wood rulers. This example 25 1/4″ long, carved of hard wood with expanded striking surface decorated with hatched panels which actually added to the pain. Banded expanded butt. Used both in Africa and South America, this instrument was probably made in Africa and brought with the slaves. Untouched with surface encrustation and few small nicks. Slavery in Brazil continued until 1888 and accounted for over 1/3 of all transatlantic slavery in the 19th century.”</em>
I have assembled a few views of the item in the image below.
-
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?
Thanks HH. I am pleased that others are working on the problem of the origin. I had mentioned the palmaterio above here. There is an illustration somewhere of a slave in a cobbler’s workshop being punished on the hand. The Romans I understand used such punishment. Much to be deprecated if you want your slave or student to use their hands for work or writing.