Popular publications tend to both reflect and to normalise the local culture and social expectations in their text, illustrations and advertisements. In 1920, electricity was still new fangled and switches common in school rooms. Publications in the North naturally reflected the North.

Are there any publications form the South reflecting an apparent preference for paddles?

Follow up of KK’s post of Aug 11, 2011 #141

Judge Wadsworth.  Spanking Matinee March 12, 1900

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn … 17%2C6979/

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn … /seq-1.pdf

The following document reveals a lack of formal training and qualifications for teachers early in the 20^th century, and the lack of regulation of corporal punishment in schools in Tennessee, and likely other Southern States. Three implements are mentioned as suitable but nothing is said about their size other than that the paddle should be small.  Nothing is said as to how or where they should be applied, nor limits on the number of strokes, implying everyone will know.

____________________________________________________________

Management and Methods for Rural and Village Teachers
Thomas E. Sanders
The Claude J. Bell Company, Nashville, Tennessee. 1905
 
 
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b26293 … =%3Bseq=98
 
SCHOOL PUNISHMENT
 
[. . .]
 
Let your effort be to discipline with the least possible punishment, but when occasion demands and nothing else will do, punish, even to severity. Avoid indignities, such as slapping or boxing the ears, pulling the nose or the hair, or striking the head. If corporal punishment must be inflicted, use a switch, a strap, or a small paddle. Administer it slowly, calmly, quietly, but effectively. When the punishment is over, do not dismiss the pupil until you have talked over quietly and dispassionately the offense and the reason for the punishment. Most punishments fail because they are done hastily and in anger, and then pupils are dismissed while yet white with rage. If the judge sentenced the criminal with the same degree of warmth and passion, and the sheriff executed the sentence with the haste and anger many teachers show in administering punishment, our courts would be less effective than they are.
 
The best teachers govern so effectively that little punishment is needed.

[. . .]

Kudos, KK your research has brought an interest to the estimable Forum among those that may or may not share your interests in the earliest history of paddling.  The estimable Forum’s longevity is due to interesting people like you.  Please do not lose interests.  Whatever made you interested in starting this thread?  Your research challenges the anti-SCP zealots that have seized the narrative that paddling is a barbaric remnant of slavery.  History is rarely that facile.

I speculated in post #779 above that school sports coaches may have had a role in popularizing the school paddle. If so, this still leaves the question as to why coaches might have favoured the paddle over other implements.

The following biography describes the life of an influential coach who likely lived and worked too late to have initiated school paddling but who continued and likely helped normalize the practice.

A Coaches Life, Les Hipple and the Marion Indians, (the story one of the greatest high school coaches in Iowa’s history)

Chapter 24 How Paddles Made a Champion, 1953

https://books.google.com/books?id=_J4T7gLkLY0C&pg=PA186

Corporal punishment is deeply embedded in African American culture almost as much as football in Texas.

https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/high-s … ital-world

High school coaches in the South of the USA were, and still are in some rural schools, the chief wielders of paddles.  Perhaps they were responsible for its introduction and popularity. If so, when, why and how?

USA High school football began in the late 19th century at the same time as many USA universities (colleges) started playing the game. Things ramped up in the 1920s.

High school football traditions such as pep rallies, marching bands, mascots, and homecomings, and probably training methods were mirrored from college football.  A few successful college coaches who imposed strict team discipline, possibly including the use of the paddle, likely influenced other coaches and their successors.  If so, coaches likely adopted the university fraternity paddle rather than the domestic paddle brought from home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_school_football
__________________________________________

Texas High School Football Dynasties
By Rick Sherrod (2013)

https://books.google.com/books?id=GmiMCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1

Except:

There is nothing like it anywhere else in America. In many Texas communities, high school football probably remains the most important male teenage rite of passage in the Lone Star State. It brings in its wake a groundswell of popular support, oftentimes leaving entire towns virtually vacant on any given football Friday. On game night, school administrators, faculty, school district staff, cheerleaders, dance teams, color guards, bands and adoring fans of every social strata, stripe and hue all unite as one.
 
Don Meredith, quarterback successively for Mount Vernon High School, Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Cowboys, once declared that Texas high school football embodies “something the state represents,” something symbolic of a Texas peopled “by rugged individuals who would physically stand their ground.” In the Lone Star State, football becomes “a communal thing… one town against another,” “a great outlet for Texans, a way of saying this is what makes us best.” It is “the first time that a young kid feels all the different responsibilities of belonging to a group, being a real member of his community.”
 
A chorus of authoritative voices affirms “Dandy” Don’s declaration. Another All-Pro NFL quarterback, Joe Theismann—from New Jersey, no less—similarly assessed, “High school football over this country [Texas] is not just a game. It is a way of life.”

[. . .]