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?

Nice picture above KK. Life Magazine, such a popular source, how did that not escape detection until now?I wonder how many teachers put their names on their paddles? That’s a first for me.

This was taken from a yearbook without attribution to which yearbook. It certainly shows how much in the open paddling was 50 or so years ago and she looks like an experienced paddler.

I wonder, in this posed picture, if she paddled without asking them to bend over when wearing with a skirt when she was to gave a single swat let say for talking while changing classes in the corridor.

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?

<div style=”width:100%;background-image:url(“/realm/A_L_123/A_L_trg.gif”);”>Hello American Way,

I’m not sure why you haven’t provided a proper link to the account of strict disciplinarian 22 year old Elementary School Teacher Gayle Graner’s case as documented on the excellent Corpun site, but anyway, here it is, an article which supplements the Daytona Beach Morning Journal article of Feb 2, 1958 linked by KK above, and a commentary, both from New York editions of ‘Time’.

I am intrigued as to how the boy she paddled, 11 year old Roscoe McGeorge, came to be a forth grader in Elementary School. Surely at 11 he should have been in sixth grade and in Middle School? Or have I misunderstood the US system? Could he have been held back as a consequence of spending too much time playing with cards in the back row of the class instead of attending to his lessons, in which case Miss Graner’s disciplinary action would seem well merited!

The lady wielding the paddle in the picture that you linked in your May 3 2014, 10:50 AM contribution above is not of course Miss Graner! I agree with you that the picture is probably posed, though it may of course be a real teacher and a real student. The blogger who published it claims that it is from a 1966 school yearbook and that it is a real paddling. But would a school yearbook, which is presumably published under the auspices of the school authorities, have pictures of a real paddling? A jocularly posed one, perhaps, but a real one? And why doesn’t the blogger link the yearbook since he claims to have found it via an on-line search?

That said, the posture adopted by the student is not dissimilar to to that in this allegedly genuine (and much more recent) paddling:

It is also the position frequently used in some Asian countries when both girls and boys are being beaten on the bottom in school. Possibly perpendicular posterior paddling is (and was) the norm in some US schools.</div>

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?

Rockdale, Texas 1966

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?

<div style=”width:100%;background-image:url(“/realm/A_L_123/A_L_trg.gif”);”>Hello Windsor,

Either someone with a wry sense of humour, or Richard Windsor, a blogger who very assiduously checks where his hits are coming from! If the latter, my congratulations. It doesn’t seem to happen here very often, though there was a corrective note from the Web Master of a Malaysian Secondary School when a contributor here started a thread suggesting that 23 girls had been publicly caned on the bottom at morning assembly there.

Either way, if you are not already a contributor here, may I please say a personal welcome to the Forum. And if you are Richard Windsor, my apologies for the comment about linking the source of the picture. I can see now that probably you couldn’t do that easily due to the structure of the page.

But I’m darned if I can see the picture there. You wouldn’t care to tell us the page number and what the caption said would you please?</div>

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 only research that I have done was through Rockdale High School 1966 yearbook linked below. There were no corporal punishment staged candids or much by way of text that were offered free online among the pages proffered. That’s certainly not to say it didn’t happen. I cannot rule out a situation where an entire class or one quarter the school could be paddled due to a consensual breaking of the student code of contact. A movie scenario could be to quell a class strike protesting the use of corporal punishment in general or a particular case. The haircuts were different in my class of 1968 but Texas and other parts of the USA were like space and time warps.

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?

It is indeed Richard Windsor. I wasn’t checking stats, every couple of weeks I pop on here to see what is going on, and to read the occasional put down

The picture is on page 162 and it is among a group of pics entitled “Inside the classroom”. If ever anyone has any queries then feel free to email me and ask me.

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?

<div style=”width:100%;background-image:url(“/realm/A_L_123/A_L_trg.gif”);”>Hello Richard Windsor,

First may I please offer my apologies for referring to you as a blogger, and thus by implication your site as a blog. You are of course a Web Master and your site is one of that increasingly rare breed, a proper personally maintained and operated (and excellent) web site. My only excuse for the mistake is that I’d seen a lot of blogs in the same session, the term slipped into my May 3 2014, 11:19 PM post and carried over into the May 8 2014, 10:21 AM post.

Thank you for the additional advice on the photograph. I am still a little dubious that it is a real paddling and suspect that it is posed. Unless the intention is to strike the student on the side of the right hip I don’t think a paddle stroke could be administered from that position. The paddler would have considerable difficulty in landing the paddle on the student’s bottom at all, and the traditional square across both buttocks swat appears an impossibility. Note how much further towards the front of the student the lady administering the paddling in the screen shot I’ve linked stands. That was apparently a genuine (if not very solemn) punishment paddling. The video concerned is linked from this post.

However, having said that I have considerable respect for your persistence in wading through all those year-book photographs and I guess that as nearly 50 years have elapsed since the picture was taken its authenticity doesn’t really matter. </div>

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?

Richard, I have done considerable research and if you find anything worth sharing that you can find here feel free to use it without attribution. I have no financial interests. Moonlightin and CP in the Age of Innocence threads may find of some value to you. I have searched yearbooks and it is a tedious task. I find it difficult to blow up or find the text associated. Did you mean page 169?

As you know some colleges archive their year books and can be a resource for non-disciplinary paddling. They are often in a more convenient layout with easier accessibility. I hope you drop by and share with us gems related to what A_L has coined: “the estimable Forum.”

BTW the jocular paddling found in A_L above had fewer hits then when I brought it to the attention to our readers.

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?

This is my serious research thread. I would like to keep it on topic. When, where and why was the paddle adopted so widely by USA schools? I am especially keen on primary sources and old documents.

Primary evidence can include newspapers, diaries, letters, interviews, speeches, laws, other official statements, and works written by individuals with first-hand knowledge of an event. I am little interested in recent assertions, made without sources being revealed, that such and such was so.