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 1915 lumber was the measurement it was sold as. Today it is smaller. For example, if today you bought a board advertised as a 1″x 4″ you would actually be getting a board measuring 3/4″ x 3.5″.

In 1915 if you bought a board advertised as 1″x 4″ you would get a 1″ x 4″ board. So based on that I would say the paddle is 1″ thick and 4″ wide. It could be a board they call a 5/4″ in which case it would be 1.25″ thick.

however the clues we got from KK narrows things down a bit.

12 years old
7 swats
10/8″ thick
17 days in bed

seems like a long time in bed but Dr.’s did that back then.

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 Bob T,

Your guess is quite as good / implausible as the answer. Your error-squared sum (ESS) = 102.

(The ESS value is a further hint!)

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 answers I would change are

7/8 ” thick paddle
10 swats

the other two don’t seem to make sense to me any other way. I can’t see the kid being 17 and the number just doesn’t fit anywhere else. So I’ll stick with 12 years old and 17 days in bed.

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 victim

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?

Hello Y’all

Well my guess from the picture of paddle and ‘victim’ is 17 years old, 12 swats 10 days in bed paddle 7/8″thick.

An earnest seeker after the truth asks

I would also like to put a question to said Professional (debbie112 that is). I don’t know if you ever have, but if you were delivering a paddling which involved spanking one cheek at a time (as you said might have been the technique with a short paddle like that illustrated) how would you determine the distribution between cheeks for odd numbers of licks please?

Thus with a right handed paddler using a ‘one cheek at a time’ paddle, would a 5 lick right, left,right, left, right be a more severe punishment than left, right, left, right, left? This is of course an entirely different issue from the right, left, right, left situation involved here , but that’s another story! happy.gif

I’ve only ever done this in a non school situation with my own children, when they were old enough to be paddled but not old enough to face a proper full sized paddle. My chosen paddle was much smaller, more the size of a small (definitely undersized) ping pong bat. It was made of light soft wood and was nicely rounded at the edges and a round shaped blade to AVOID bruising entirely. Unfortunately for the seeker, I applied equal number of licks to each cheek to avoid exactly the problem he correctly identifies. Also my children were about to reach/ just in early teens so they fit comfortably over my lap!Hence the licks were much reduced in strength, more of a warning!

The school paddle can produce a bulls eye on the far cheek, it rarely does so on the near cheek.Whilst it is possible to use a technique which bruises both,though probably never equally. This requires skill practice and substantial force. Hence why some staff I’ve seen in my career do use a ‘shortened’ paddle. its also why the paddle should in my view by ’rounded’ at the far edge, to avoid a nasty bruise from a sharp corner angle.

As for Another Lurker’s virtual paddling. I would be happy to demonstrate the difference if he were to visit us in Mississippi!!

Bob T’s comments on the sizing of wood were interesting. Many paddles appear not to be made to exact standard sizes (eg somewhere between 3/8 and 4/8 in thickness when the rubric demands not more than 1/2 inch). Why is this the case that we can’t or don’t cut/sell exact sizes today? I know nothing about woodworking!

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?

Bob T 1st —  74 (Not 104. Sorry Bob, I miscalculated.)

Bob T 2nd —  83

Debbie     —  25

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 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?

Hello Another Lurker,

I’d go with that,it seems logical. BUT if a strapping 17 year old boy was confined to bed for 12 days with a few paddle bruises, then perhaps this goes some way to explain why the US never followed the British system of a nationwide health service free at the point of use! If US doctors followed this physicians lead they would have bankrupted us long before now!

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?

Not Fair!!! After my two guesses KK posted a link to a picture of the victim which also said 17.

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 Bob T,

All’s fair in love, war, and Forum Christmas puzzles Bob!

But seriously, you have a point. However you should bear two things in mind:<ol>[*]These Kiwis can be very devious!  KK has almost certainly renamed the picture he linked, as it is in his own file space. I suspect that he will have altered both the name and the age as a deliberate ploy to confuse the issue, I would have done. KK will certainly have known that I would search for the name together with other available data to try to find whatever document or report he is working from, because I said above that I’d previously tried such a search. And I did indeed search again, using all permutations of the name and age in the picture name. Nary a thing!

</li>[*]The declared competition rules are merely that:

It would appear therefore that you can have as many goes as you like. If more than one person achieves the lowest ESS recorded, the winner is the person who achieved that ESS first. Before re-entering however, it may assist you to wait and see what ESS my entry got. I doubt if it was correct. A nagging little suspicion tells me that the boy is not 17, but I cannot then juggle the other parameters to my satisfaction.</li>[/list]</div>