Whatever Happened to Corporal Punishment?

Few policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and parents talk openly about corporal punishment in the 21st century. The phrase seems more appropriate to the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was liberally administered to children and youth in classrooms and principals’ offices. Paddling and spanking students (and other ways of physically punishing students) were common and legally permitted practices. In many states, it was the law, and in those states that banned the practice, legislators allowed district school boards to decide whether they wanted corporal punishment in their particular schools. Today, many European nations have banned it in schools. Most states in the U.S. do so as well. Yet it persists in pre-K-12 public schools. In this post, I will lay out both past and present instances of this common school practice. What is corporal punishment? Corporal punishment is a euphemism. In Latin, corporal means “of the body” hiding that it is basically physical punishment. Rather…

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