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?

Source: http://fultonhistory.com/Process small/Newspapers/Fairport NY Herald/Fairport NY Herald 1911 – 1915 Grayscale.pdf/Fairport NY Herald 1911 – 1915 Grayscale – 1214.pdf

FAIRPORT, N.Y., WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1913 James K. O’Connor UTICA’S CITY JUDGE
[. . .]

The care of boys is one of the hobbies of Judge O’Connor. Long before the law compelled segregation, he held a juvenile court at a special hour for the young people and saw to it that the police didn’t mix boys with old criminals. He has a way of his own in treating with boy offenders. Five youngsters robbed a freight car and were arrested. The juvenile delinquent law hadn’t been passed then and they were charged with burglary and grand larceny. The boys pleaded guilty and the judge suspended sentence. The lawyers protested. They said the boys would go right out and commit burglaries again and that their chums would get into the business too. “It’s a bad thing not to punish them,” they complained. “I’ll see that the boys won’t come back, said Judge O’Connor”.

“Beats Jail a Mile”

Then he knocked the side board out of a drawer in his desk, whittled one end down to a handle, and took each of the five boys separately into his private office. Terrible sounds followed and when the youngsters went home, they were roaring like young bears. The judge, puffing like a wind broken horse, looked after them sadly.

“I hated to do it,” he said, “but it beats jail by a mile.”

Papers all over the United States told about the spanking and editors of twenty-seven papers in foreign countries mailed Judge O’Connor editorial clippings commending him. The papers included the Berlin Tageblatt, Vienna-Freie Presse, Melbourne News, Reynold’s Labor Paper of London, and the Dublin Independent. A woman in Rochester wrote him an indignant protest arid called him a brute.

That paddle is still a conspicuous object in Judge O’Connor’s court. It is used sometimes too.

“Send me to jail if you want to,” a fifteen-year-old boy shouted defiantly at the judge. “I ain’t going to let no policeman order me off the street.”

Beats Reform Schools Too

A hand that had a grip like the jaws of an alligator caught the boy by the body and lifted him upon the judicial bench. Then crack! went the “paddle,” and it kept cracking until the boy roared for mercy. The boy’s mother danced a jig during the spanking and shouted: “Good man, judge! Good man!”

That boy didn’t have to be sent to jail, nor did he bother the police afterward. “Spanking,” said Judge O’Connor, “beats reform schools in many cases. That’s why I use it.”

The judge would like to use the same method with brutal husbands. Once he did hit a wife beater on the head with his gavel. Then he discharged the man and told the police to call at his home every day and if they found he had beaten his wife again to arrest him, club him well and lock him up. That husband reformed quickly.

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?

KK I do like what you put in red. Why? I think the paddle is a more humane instrument of correction so that a female teacher would be more likely to choose that than a more painful option.

A hairbrush without bristles is a paddle after all. Edith Fellows about to be spanked by Claudette Colbert with what amounts to a paddle.

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Teachers trained in Normal Schools where there were no fraternities or sororities. Initiations are further from school punishments in their intent.

Colored teachers were allowed to teach freed slaves the basics. The paddle could have been used at that time. Paddles could also be used on teachers in Louisiana.

There was no disposition of the case that I could find.

On the very top Chicago Tribune July 23, 1866.

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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 woodshed seems to have been very much an American institution. Why was this? Presumably, woodsheds were a feature of wooded rural areas which were required to have a large degree of self sufficiency. Many rural communities lacked goods to trade and the means to transport them. Wood fires would have been used for cooking and heating. Freshly harvested wood might need to be dried for up to two years before it burns well.

Paddles seem to have been most used in rural areas. I have detected no strong links of paddles with woodsheds. What was the most popular implement used in woodsheds?

Fiction and artwork can provide useful information on past practices, or past perceptions of them. Such sources can usefully augment non-fiction.
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Source: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433082547880

The adventures of Joel Pepper, by Margaret Sidney (Boston, 1900) [pseud.]
Illustrated by Sears Gallagher.

The stick (switch?) is dangerously thick and unnecessarily severe for such a small boy.

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 late 19th century reformatory paddling were justified (perhaps unjustly so) by comparing them to home spankings. Public schools are not reformatories so a paddling would not be as severe. KK would you know when the first mention of a schoolgirl being paddled? KK The estimable Forum has benefitted so much from your magisterial historical research found throughout many threads but more so this one. Was the paddling of a non-slave girl reported first in a reformatory (state training schools) or in a classroom setting?

The paddle would seem to me to be seen as a more humane instrument of correction in that a paddle can approximate the human palm used upon children of tender years,

The Topeka State Journal December 6, 1913

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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?

School CP is most popular in the Southern “Bible Belt” states of the USA. This raises the question as to whether the popularity of the paddle, in preference to other implements, is determined by conservative protestant beliefs, and if so, how and why. Or, more plausibly, does the reverse apply? That is, does the application of the “board of education” to the “seat of learning” reduce the ability to explore and adopt new ideas?

Heavy paddle blows to the buttocks can cause peri-ischial tuberosity (sit bone) bruising. Can it also cause damage to the more distant but delicate frontal lobes? Are the paddled brain-damaged and, as a consequence, more likely to become paddlers in turn?

Does the paddle cause conservative protestant beliefs?

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?

KK here’s a question. When was the first time in your research you encountered the paddle described as the Board of Education? American Way