In High School, especially senior high, in States such as both the one in which I teach and my home State, it is necessary to paddle both young men and women with considerable force if paddling is going to be an effective lesson. However, the reaction of some students is disproportionate to the pain inflicted, and to me can only be explained by the entire ‘ritual’ of the paddling.
For example this week, and we are hardly back to school, I was asked to act as witness to a hallway paddling for misuse of a mobile phone. In my county we are one of the few that still allows hallway paddling. One of our more attractive Seniors had been covertly texting in a social studies period taken by our coach Samantha.