Corporal Punishment

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The deciding factor in the future of corporal punishment is seen in the Ingraham v. Wright Supreme Court case. In 1970, James Ingraham, an eighth grade student of Drew Junior High School was one of the many beneficiaries of corporal punishment distributed by Willie Wright, the principal of the high school. The rationality behind Ingraham’s punishment was that he was slow to respond to his teacher instructions. As a result, his teacher sent him to the principal office where he bent over the table was given twenty licks with a paddle. The paddling was so severe, according to the Ingraham’s doctor, he needed to miss weeks of school due to hematoma on his buttocks. Defined by Merriam-Webster, a hematoma is clotted blood that forms in a tissue by broken blood vessels. Subsequently, a ninth grade student at the same school, Roosevelt Andrews, also suffered egregious attacks for minor offenses. Principal Wright on two occasions punished Andrews for anticipating a late arrival to a class he was in route to. During the first attack, Andrews was hit with a wooded paddle on the buttocks and over the arm. This beating deprived him of full access from his injured arm for weeks. The second punishment, though, more vicious due to carelessness and a lack of official oversight, Andrews was hit from his neck to legs. According to Newell (1972) in referencing The Children’s petition of 1669, teachers and administrators have taken up an office they are unable to manage; the evidence of mismanagement is seen in corporal punishment. The Florida Association of School Psychologists says the state of Florida law reveals corporal punishment as allowable by teachers, but if students are injured by severe beatings to sue school officials to recov... ... middle of paper ... ...Arkansas, the majority of the children being physically punished are minorities. Other than Texas, where there is a large Hispanic make-up with higher numbers than any other state, African American students show increasingly high numbers with being paddled. These pro corporal punishment states have granted leniency to districts that disagrees with this form of discipline. According to Durrant and Smith (2011) states are giving parents the option to opt-in or opt-out of allowing their children to submit to physical punishment. Albeit the 1980s and 1990s saw a decrease in pro corporal punishment states, only five states have banned it since then, Rhode Island in 220, Delaware in 2003, Pennsylvania in 2005, Ohio in 2009 and New Mexico in 2011. Donnelly and Straus (2005) suggest that the majority of the states left are in south and southwest areas of the country.

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