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holyfamilypenguin4,5593
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 The fact that it had to explain what a paddle vs. rattan cane bodes well that it is one of the earlier reference. That is also the start approximate the earliest mentions of paddles related to hazing on the college level. School teachers became better educated as the 20th century unfolded.
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’s interesting that pictures of younger pupils often show youngsters receiving corporal punishment in an over the knee or non-free standing position (pushed down) from school corporal punishment. This jocular article neatly delineates twig, slipper and shingle. The country school would seem to make less a distinction schoolMARM between scholastic and domestic corporal punishment with all the formalities. Women couldn’t be married and teach so devoted themselves as surrogate mothers as opposed to schoolMASTER who were more authoritarian. Formal education with teachers graduating from “Normal School” happened down the road some.
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KKxyz3,59957
Excerpt from Minnesota State School regulations:
“No other instrument shall be used for administering corporal punishment than a leather paddle which shall be not less than three and one-half inches (3-l/2) wide, not more than sixteen (16) inches long and not more than one-twelfth (1-12) of an inch thick. All edges and corners shall be carefully rounded to guard against injury.”
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?
Note also:
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 Pittsburgh Press, Sunday April 29, 1928
DON’T PADDLE KIDS LIKE THEY USED TO
Corporal Punishment Out of Style, Says Superintendent Davidson – Customs in School Reflect Home Life.
By W. L. PIGUE.
Spare the rod and spoil the child no longer holds good in local schools, according to William M. Davidson, superintendent of the public schools here. Corporal punishment went out of style when such punishment went out of the homes, he says.
Teachers still reserve the right to exert authority in the form of physical punishment of habitually disobedient children but they resort to that form of punishment only in rare instance, according to Davidson.
And even when a lickin’ is deemed necessary, the old-fashioned method of “paddling” with the hand or a board is not used Davidson recommends that local teachers use a switch only, and “if it must be done, do it in a dims led manner. The child should not be punished while the teacher is in a heat of anger or to ‘get even.’
“The ways of the school are a reflection of home life in a community. Just a few years ago the father of the family ruled over it with austerity and severity.”
In the old days, according to Davidson the son obeyed his father and cut the wood because his old man had told him to and if he didn’t do it would give him a “tanning.”
But nowadays, it’s different. Davidson says. The parents have reached an “educational age.” The parents now rule in a different way.
They tell their children why they should do certain things and explain to them the reasons for certain necessities. “Austerity and severity” has been replaced by instruction through love and understanding. It has been explained to children why they should be guided by, wisdom gained from experience and training.
In rare instances the parent, even today, feels that he must spank, paddle, switch, lick, tan or otherwise manhandle the child just to let him know who’s who. Corporal punishment is used only in the hope of making the child realize that the world will not tolerate a person who won’t do what is right, that such a person is subject to authority so that he can not impose on the rights and privileges of others, according to Davidson’s explanation.
The right is conceded the teacher to have charge of the students during her classes the same as if she was mother to them.
Custom is the regulator of practically all systems found in the schools. Davidson says. The teachers follow the customs of the homes, explaining to the child why he should or should not do certain things. The child, because he has been taught that he must have an education to be the mental equal of his associates, submits to the teacher’s instruction.
The co-operation of the child with the teacher is what makes the paddles unnecessary in modern schools. Superintendent Davidson says he believes the day will come when corporal punishment will be almost totally obsolete, with the rare instances more rare, and other instances non-existent.
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holyfamilypenguin4,5593
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?
1913 Texas laws.
The evidence of the State showed substantially that the defendant whipped her pupil for a disobedience of the rules of the school, with a paddle about two feet long and about two inches wide of white pine wood, with which she administered a number of licks on the back part of the legs above the knees of the pupil; the pupil testifying that it hurt him and that he could not go back to school for several weeks, as he could not well sit down on account of the whipping and that his limbs were sore and paining him. Physicians examined the pupil and testified that they found some bruises and black spots on his limbs which were considerably red and swollen, but that there was no abrasion of the skin on either leg and that the patient was walking around all the time; that the circulation of the patient was not good and that a stroke on the person of one whose circulation is poor is likely to leave a sign, whereas, if the circulation were good, it would leave no sign. It was also shown that the defendant had never manifested any ill-will toward this pupil, etc. This, although the testimony is very voluminous, constitutes the salient facts in the case.
End of 19th century. N.B. The paddle is looked upon as a problem, at least upon the fairer gender. Other instruments of correction are used on the back and shoulders of the girls. The paddle may very well have a less dignified target. Paddles are often used in reform institutions but this is in a school for girls.
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?
Follow up on 19th century girls being paddled. Wow. Those Michigan girls took a beating back then. I don’t think the dainty ones of today could take it. 
Describe that paddle, what kind of an instrument was it? As near as I can remember about eighteen inches long, about four and a half or five inches wide at the widest part and from a half to three-fourths in thickness.
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KKxyz3,59957
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 Arizona Journal-Miner, 3 March 1908, page 2.
Editorial Comment
SMALL BAD BOYS BE PADDLED?
Parents and school principals never will agree on the question of corporal punishment. Bad children are, usually, the product of defective home training. In ninety-nine cases in a hundred, the bad boy at school is a bad boy at home. And the parent who spares the rod himself will not look kindly upon its use by the exasperated teacher. Even the parent who uses the paddle himself – not always wisely, but, perhaps, too well – is inclined to regard the child as his own property, and feels that his property rights are infringed upon when another person trounces his unregenerate offspring.
But what are the schools to do with the incorrigibles? The New York board of education will hold a special meeting, March 4, to answer the question “To spank or not to spank?” and, if so, when, and how? A set of questions bearing on the subject was recently submitted to four hundred and seventy superintendents and principals of New York City. With these expressions of opinion in hand, a special committee has made a report, which, in part, reads as follows:
‘This committee is of the opinion that corporal punishment should be permit in schools in extreme cases only, under strict regulations, and that it should be administered by the principal with the written consent of the parents or else by a parent in the presence of the principal. Where parents refuse to punish a child themselves in the presence of the principal we believe that the principal should at once report such child to the city superintendent for suspension, and when suspended the child should be sent to a truant school or a school for incorrigibles. This committee believes that the knowledge on the part of the pupils that there is punishment provided for persistent disorderly conduct will to a great degree prevent the necessity for its use. This committee also recommends that the board of superintendents be requested to recommend at once to the board of education a revision of the course of study in ethics so as to place more emphasis on the respect due from children to parents, teachers and others of authority.
But there remains the proper method of applying the paddle – or should it be a stout switch? In Portland, Ore., the prosecution of a school principal, by the parent of a boy he had punished, moves the Oregonian [newspaper] to say:
If boys must be flogged, the paddle seems to be an almost divinely appointed implement to do it with. That area of the body which it most aptly fits is not very susceptible to mortal wounds; it has merely a sufficiency of nerves to unlock penitential tears by their tingling when temperately flagellated; and the bones which it contains are so abundantly swathed about with muscular tissue that there is no danger of breaking them. It is fashionable in these degenerate days to deny the hand of Providence in arranging the affairs of the world; but if there is one piece of evidence more convincing that another that the Almighty actually did fit this and that together and adapt one thing to another in our mundane sphere, it is the perfect adaption of this portion of a boy’s body to receive impulsive stimulation from a paddle.
Perhaps our acute contemporary was brought up that way, and speaks with knowledge of the regenerating influence of the paddle, when applied to the portion of the anatomy so well described. But empirical knowledge often is misleading. The ways of our fathers were not always the best ways. Although it is swathed so comfortably and providentially “with muscular tissue” the particular area of the body to which reference is thus delicately made is not a safe place to apply even the household slipper, not to mention the ruder implement, yclept [called] the “paddle”. Nature – or Providence – put the protecting tissues in this particular place for the very reason that its contiguity to the base of the spine requires it for protection from injury. Paddle, if you must, pedagogue, but don’t paddle there. – Los Angeles News.
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?
Warsaw Daily Times, Indiana, December 18. 1897, page 1
DUG UP AN OLD LAW And Now the Troublesome “Kids” Are Paddled According to Statute.
MUNCIE STYLE OF USING THE ROD
Muncie, Ind., Dec. 18. – The old law concerning corporal punishment in the public schools, enacted by the state legislature years ago, which has been considered a dead-letter for several decades, has been revived by the local school board and is now in vogue in the city schools. A pupil had been laid across a seat and rather severely punished, but the evidence before the justice of the peace who tried the case showed that he was disobedient and deserved unusually strong treatment. The teacher was acquitted of the charge of assault and battery, which had been preferred against him by the boy’s mother. However, there was such strong feeling against severe punishment that the school board ordered the rigid enforcement of the old law, long forgotten. The teachers, many of them, did not know of the existence of the law and had to look it up under the direction of attorneys.
Provisions of the Old Law
It provides that incorrigible pupils may be punished if their parents consent, but if the latter decline to permit their children to be treated thus, then the pupils must be expelled from school. In punishing the victim must not be placed across a seat or chair, but must be placed across one’s lap. The paddle to be used must be of “light” material as to weight, one and one-half inches wide and one-eighth of an inch thick. It may be applied vigorously, but not laid on too severely. In most cases the parents or guardians consent to the punishment but are careful that the rules concerning its appliance are strictly observed. A few, however, have taken their children out of school rather than have them paddled.
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 Washington Reporter, August 29, 1898, page 8
Getting the Boy Ready for School? Well make it fit, if we have to make it to order.
We’ve been thinking about that boy for six or eight weeks – been getting ready for to supply his wants – now we’re ready. That special boys’ department of ours is growing in popularity, and every day you can see processions of humanity and huwomanty going up to the children’s room, The expenses of the warfare between the boy and his clothes are minimized when supplies of best wearables cost our little prices. We can take that homely little kid – the one down on the other street from where you live – and put him in a good looking, wearable suit for the little price of 89c, and make him look so much better you’ll hardly recognize him. For $1.50 we suit your boy with a school suit so nice that you’ll feel like keeping it for best and let him wear his Sunday suit for every day. Double knees, so he can play marbles – double elbows so lie can scour the top of his desk, and a pad on the seat so that
“When paddler with paddle paddles the pad,
It’s with satisfaction – to paddler and lad.”
But maybe you think he had better wear out his Sunday suit before he outgrows it etc., etc.
LEVINO, THE BOYS’ BEST OUTFITTER