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2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
American Way
Shingling the boys. The article is 1874 but the author is recalling an earlier time.
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KKxyz3,59957
Thanks for your concern. Yes, it is true I have not been very active in recent times. I have little new to say and am feeling jaded. It is the sort of condition that was once treated with a cross country run, a cold shower and a few strokes of the cane – or the prospect of such if you did not buck up. A cross country run, a hot shower, then soup and scones also worked.
I understand CP was used in some monasteries and universities in the middle ages into modern times. Sin had to be paid for in the present world or before entering the next.
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2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
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KKxyz3,59957
An excerpt from: THE ANACONDA STANDARD [Montana]. MONDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 26, 1896.
IN THE SCHOOL ROOM
Superintendent [Prof. F. L. ] Kern’s First Monthly Report of the Year. [1896]
STATISTICS OF THE TERM
The superintendent’s first monthly report of the present school term shows a total enrollment of 3,136 pupils, with an average daily attendance of 3,415, while the average number belonging Is 3,516. The average daily attendance at the different buildings is as follows:
High school, 141; [. . .]
With approval of parents, five cases of corporal punishment were administered by the principals by use of the latest improved paddle method. Parents who send unruly or incorrigible children to the public schools are supposed to comply with the rules and regulations the same as other people and those who are unwilling to allow the teacher or principal to inflict a smart spanking when all other means of discipline are exhausted, may expect to see such pupils permanently dismissed.
Including the two outside sub-districts the corps of teachers now consists of the following: Fifteen male teachers, 83 female teachers, besides five supply [substitute] teachers, making a total of 108.
[. . .]
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This article dates from a time when compulsory education was seen as the key to the future. (Not all parents agreed, especially those who relied on child labour for farm work.) Substantial effort went into building schools, developing rules for their management and training teachers.
L. F Kern was a newly appointed superintendent Butte MT public schools who was active in establishing policies and rules for the expanding school system including, it seems, those covering corporal punishment. I have yet to find the details but this may have been an important example of the paddle displacing other implements or haphazard practices.
Who was Kern? Where was he raised and educated? Did he explain the rationale for opting for the paddle? Was there public discussion of the matter at the time or perhaps a controversy?
Another_Lurker likes this post
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Another_Lurker10K289
With attendance at the schools apparently in the mid three thousands only five instances of the use of the ‘latest improved paddle method’ would be a remarkably low SCP total if that was all the corporal punishment that occurred.
Could the specific mention of instances of this punishment, and the fact that a requirement for parental permission for it’s use is noted, mean that his was some sort of super-punishment, used only in the gravest of cases after other methods of punishment had failed to achieve improvement?
Probably not, but alas we may never know either way. I would urge American Way to bring the full power of his undoubtedly very considerable research abilities to bear on this one. Those old US newspapers recorded anything and everything. Somewhere in a paper local to the area there will undoubtedly be an earlier description of Professor Kern’s ‘improved paddle method’. The trick is to find it!
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2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
1896
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn … 77%2C2486/
1905
Smaller children were spanked over the knee.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn … 23%2C2890/
Schools that use paddles for discipline also use it for birthday celebrations.
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KKxyz3,59957
EAL quite failed to detect the OCR / careless editing error in the total enrolment figure for the schools. Total enrolments were reported as 3835. (Or perhaps he was too polite to mention the blunder?)
Further, I suspect the new school rules adopted in 1893, touched only lightly on discipline and punishments and probably made no mention of paddles. The news report is brief. It and other news from the time make it clear Kern was against the use of CP and the rules he drafted were likely restrictive.
I believe the “latest new paddle method” may be a disparaging reference to generic CP rather than the paddle itself. Such a reference would imply that readers will be familiar with the spanking paddle. I do not think there were strong cultural links to the South.
Other news from the period includes a report of a court case in which the judge ruled teachers have the same authority to punish as parents. Prudent school authorities might have decided they should emulate parental punishments as closely as possible including the choice of implement.
When , why and how the paddle came to be the preferred implement for administering CP in US schools remains uncertain although strong parental influence and a desire not to mark the skin were certainly important factors in its adoption.
When documents, news reports and nonfiction sources are lacking, useful insights can sometimes be gleaned from poetry, images and works of fiction.
The following poem, reported by American Way in the 1897 Flogging Apparatus thread tells us something about what the young poet, the newspaper’s editor and its readership knew or understood in 1906 about school CP. At present I know nothing of the poet’s school CP experiences.
The schoolmaster in the following poem used his hand, cypress shingles and barrel staves. There is no mention of switches, canes or straps.
_________________________________________________________
The Union Times (Union SC) December 14, 1906, page 6.
Evolution of Spanking
[An electric spanking machine is now
in use in a public school in Peoria, Ill –
News Item.]
We call to mind the master grim,
With horny hands of leather.
Oh, well we all remember him
When we were lads together!
For when we’d shin the orchard wall,
Hook school or other pranking.
His bony palms would give us all
The soundest kind of spanking.
Time passed; the master feeble grew;
His paints lost force and fire.
But still our pranks were far from few;
Each day we raised his ire.
So from the schoolhouse on the hill
He plucked a cypress shingle
And spanked us one by one until
Each nerve would dance and jingle.
But, though the shingle left its mark
Until we studied standing
Each day would bring another lark,
Despite stern rules commanding.
Our blunders made the master rave,
Our pranks were still increasing,
Until he got a barrel stave
And spanked us without ceasing.
The old school house has passed away;
Likewise the good old master,
But if he taught his class today
Perhaps he’d spank them faster.
He’d touch a button near at hand
And start those paddles swinging.
Some fifty spanks each second and
Each one spark charged and stinging.
– Victor A. Hermann in Judge magazine.
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[The alleged machine in Peoria, Illinois was blatant fiction]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_(magazine)
Judge was a weekly satirical magazine published in the United States from 1881 to 1947
Alternating current frequencies varied from place to place when reticulated electric power was first introduce. It seems Hermann was familiar with 50Hz rather than the now USA standard 60Hz. Fifty spanks per second is impractical and likely lethal if attempted.
Victor Herman was a young man who lived in Baltimore and started having his jokes and poems published in magazines and newspapers from about 1898, as related in his autobiography.
https://books.google.com/books?id=__cgAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA856
