School corporal punishment

School corporal punishment covers official punishments of school students for misbehaviour that involve striking the student a given number of times in a generally methodical and premeditated ceremony. The punishment is usually administered either across the buttocks or on the hands, with an implement specially kept for the purpose such as a rattan cane, wooden paddle, or leather strap. Less commonly, it could also include spanking or smacking the student in a deliberate manner on a specific part of the body with the open hand, especially at the elementary school level.

Advocates of school corporal punishment argue that it provides an immediate response to indiscipline and that the student is quickly back in the classroom learning, rather than being suspended from school. Opponents believe that other disciplinary methods are equally or more effective. Some regard it as tantamount to violence or abuse.

In most places, corporal punishment in public schools is governed by official regulations laid down by governments or local education authorities, defining such things as the implement to be used, the number of strokes that may be administered, which members of staff may carry it out, and whether parents must be informed or consulted. Depending on how narrowly the regulations are drawn and how rigorously enforced, this has the effect of making the punishment a structured ceremony that is legally defensible in a given jurisdiction and of inhibiting staff from lashing out on the spur of the moment.

Geographical scope


Corporal punishment used to be prevalent in schools in many parts of the world, but in recent decades it has been outlawed in most of Europe and in Canada, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand and several other countries (see list of countries, below). It remains commonplace in a number of countries in Africa, south-east Asia and the Middle East (see list of countries, below).

In the United States, the Supreme Court ruling in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) held that school corporal punishment does not violate the federal Constitution. Paddling continues to be used to a significant extent in a number of Southern states, though there has been a sharp decline in its incidence over the past 20 years.

In some Asian and African countries where it has been theoretically outlawed, it is still used in practice.

Much of the traditional culture that surrounds corporal punishment in school, at any rate in the English-speaking world, derives largely from British practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly as regards the caning of teenage boys. There is a vast amount of literature on this, in both popular and serious culture. Britain itself outlawed the practice in 1987 for state schools and more recently for all schools.

Many schools in Singapore and Malaysia use caning (for boys) as a routine official punishment for misconduct, as also some African countries. In some Middle Eastern countries whipping is used. In South Korea, male and female secondary students alike are commonly spanked in school. (See list of countries, below.)

In most of continental Europe, school corporal punishment has been banned for several decades, much longer in certain countries. As a formal deliberate ceremony, it seems to have been more common in northern/Protestant countries of Germanic culture than in southern/Catholic countries of Latin culture. Caning was not completely abolished until 1967 in Denmark and 1983 in Germany. (See list of countries, below.)

From the 1917 revolution onwards, corporal punishment was outlawed in the Soviet Union as contrary to communist ideology. Soviet visitors to western schools would express shock at its use. Other communist regimes followed suit: for instance, corporal punishment remains outlawed in present-day North Korea and (in theory) in mainland China. Meanwhile, communists in other countries such as Britain took the lead in campaigning against school corporal punishment, which they claimed was a symptom of the decadence of "capitalist" education systems.

Justification and criticism
Principal David Nixon, a supporter of corporal punishment in schools, says that as soon as the student has been punished he can go back to his class and continue learning, in contrast to out-of-school suspension, which removes him from the educational process and gives him a free "holiday".

Philip Berrigan, another supporter of corporal punishment, says that the corporal punishment saves much staff time that would otherwise have to be devoted to supervising detention classes or in-school suspension, and managing the bureaucracy that goes with these punishments. Parents, too, often complain about the inconvenience occasioned by penalties such as detention or Saturday school.

One argument made against corporal punishments is that some research has shown it to be not as effective as positive means for managing student behaviour. These studies have linked corporal punishment to adverse physical, psychological and educational outcomes including, "increased aggressive and destructive behaviour, increased disruptive classroom behaviour, vandalism, poor school achievement, poor attention span, increased drop-out rate, school avoidance and school phobia, low self-esteem, anxiety, somatic complaints, depression, suicide and retaliation against teacher."

Medical, pediatric or psychological societies opposing school corporal punishment include: the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics,  the Society for Adolescent Medicine,  the American Psychological Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Psychiatrists,  the Canadian Paediatric Society and the Australian Psychological Society. School corporal punishment is also opposed by the (U.S.) National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Argentina
Banned in 1813, corporal punishment was re-legalised in 1817 and punishments by physical pain lasted until the 1980s. The instruments were rebenques, slappings in the face and others.

Australia
In Australia, corporal punishment is banned by law in all schools in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Tasmania. In Victoria, it is banned in government schools but not in private schools. The state government currently has a program for its removal as a condition of school registration. Corporal punishment is banned in government schools under ministerial guidelines or local educational policy, but is lawful in private schools in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia. In the Northern Territory there is currently no legal prohibition.

Austria
School corporal punishment was banned in 1974.

Canada
In Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (2004) the Supreme Court outlawed school corporal punishment. In public schools, the usual implement was a rubber/canvas strap applied to the hands, while private schools often used a paddle or cane administered to the student's posterior. In many parts of Canada, 'the strap' had not been used in public schools since the 1970s or even earlier: thus, it has been claimed that it had not been used in Quebec since the 1960s, and in Toronto it was banned in 1971. However, some schools in Alberta had been using the strap up until the ban in 2004.

School Corporal Punishment Bans in Canadian Provinces
Every province except Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan had banned corporal punishment in public schools before the above-mentioned 2004 ban, though British Columbia and Manitoba were the only provinces to ban it in both public and private schools. They are, in chronological order by year of provincial ban:
 * British Columbia - 1973
 * Nova Scotia - 1989
 * New Brunswick - 1990
 * Yukon - 1990
 * Prince Edward Island - 1993
 * Northwest Territories - 1995
 * Nunavut - 1995
 * Newfoundland and Labrador - 1997
 * Quebec - 1997

China
All corporal punishment has been theoretically banned since the communist revolution in 1949. In practice, students are caned or paddled in some schools.

Czech Republic
Although it has not been explicitly prohibited by law, corporal punishment is not included in the permitted disciplinary measures.

Egypt
A 1998 study found that physical punishment is used extensively by teachers in Egypt to punish behavior they regard as unacceptable. Around 80% of the boys and 60% of the girls by teachers using their hands, sticks, straps, shoes, and kicks. The most common reported injuries were bumps and contusions; wound, fractures, loss of consciousness and concussion were less common.

France
The systematic use of corporal punishment has been absent from French schools since the 19th century. There is no explicit legal ban on it, but in 2008 a teacher was fined for slapping a student.

Germany
School corporal punishment, historically widespread, was outlawed in different states via their administrative law at different times. It was not completely abolished everywhere until 1983. At the latest since 1993 a corporal punishment by a teacher is a criminal offence. In that year a sentence by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany (NStZ 1993,591) was published which overruled the previous powers enshrined in customary law and upheld by some regional appeal courts (Oberlandesgericht) even in the 1970s. They assumed a right of chastisement was a defense of justification against the accusation of | Causing bodily harm, Section 223 Strafgesetzbuch.

Greece
Corporal punishment in Greek primary schools was banned in 1998, and in secondary schools in 2005.

India
In India, there is no school corporal punishment in the western sense of the term. By definition, school corporal punishment "is not to be confused with mere hitting, where a teacher lashes out at a student on the spur of the moment, which is not corporal punishment but brutality". The Supreme Court of India banned this type of brutality in schools in 2000, and 17 out of 28 states claim to apply the ban, though enforcement is lax. In 2009 incidents of brutality still took place. A number of social and cultural organizations, including Shukrachakra are campaigning against corporal punishment in India.

Ireland
In schools in the Irish Republic, corporal punishment was banned by regulation in 1982, and its use became a criminal offence in 1996.

Italy
Banned in 1928.

Japan
Although legally banned in 1947, corporal punishment was still found in some schools in the 1980s. In late 1987, about 60% of junior high school teachers felt it was necessary, with 7% believing it was necessary in all conditions, 59% believing it should be applied sometimes and 32% disapproving of it in all circumstances; while at elementary (primary) schools, 2% supported it unconditionally, 47% felt it was necessary and 49% disapproved.

Malaysia
Caning is a common form of discipline in some Malaysian schools. Legally it should be applied only to male students, but the idea of making the caning of girls lawful has recently been debated. This would be applied to the palm of the hand, whereas boys are typically caned across the seat of the trousers.

Netherlands
It was banned in 1920.

Philippines
Corporal punishment is prohibited in private and public schools.

Singapore
Corporal punishment is legal in Singapore schools (for male students only), and fully encouraged by the government in order to maintain strict discipline. Only a light rattan cane may be used. This must be administered in a formal ceremony by the school management after due deliberation, not by classroom teachers. Most secondary schools (whether independent, autonomous or government-controlled), and also some primary schools and one or two post-secondary institutions, use caning to deal with misconduct by boys. At the secondary and post-secondary level, the rattan strokes are always delivered to the student's clothed posterior. The Ministry of Education has stipulated a maximum of six strokes per occasion. In some cases the ceremony is performed in front of the other students.

South Korea
Corporal punishment is lawful in South Korean schools. It usually takes the form of disciplining the student with a stick that is too rigid and thick to be called a cane in the traditional British sense. It is often applied to the student's clothed buttocks, but may also be given on the calves, the soles of the feet, or the back of the thighs. Boys and girls alike are frequently punished in this manner by teachers for any offence in school. Government recommendations are that the stick should not be thicker than 1.5 cm in diameter and that the number of strokes should not exceed 10. These punishments are typically administered in a classroom or corridor with other students present, and the procedure is generally less formal and premeditated than in some other countries such as Singapore. It is common for several students to receive corporal punishment together.

Spain
Banned in 1985.

Sweden
Corporal punishment at school has been prohibited in folkskolestadgan (the elementary school ordinance) since 1958.

Taiwan
In 2006 Taiwan made corporal punishment in the school system illegal, but it is still known to be practised (see Corporal punishment in Taiwan).

United Kingdom
In state-run schools, and also in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was outlawed by Parliament with effect from 1987. In other private schools it was banned in 1999 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland).

The implement used in many state and private schools in England and Wales was a flexible rattan cane, applied either to the student's hands or (especially in the case of teenage boys) to the seat of the trousers. Slippering was widely used as a less formal alternative. In a few English cities, a strap was used instead of the cane.

In Scotland a leather strap, the tawse, administered to the palms of the hands, was universal in state schools, but some private schools used the cane.

More than 20 years after abolition in state schools, there persists a marked lack of consensus on corporal punishment. A 2008 poll of 6,162 UK teachers by the Times Educational Supplement found that one in five teachers, and 22% of secondary teachers, would still back the use of caning in extreme cases. Meanwhile government research suggests that many British citizens believe that the removal of corporal punishment in schools has been a contributory factor in what is perceived to be a general decline in pupil behaviour.

United States
In 1867 New Jersey became the first U.S. state to abolish corporal punishment in schools. The second was Massachusetts 104 years later in 1971. Currently, corporal punishment is banned in public schools in 30 U.S. states. In two of these states, New Jersey and Iowa, it is illegal in private schools as well.

Corporal punishment in American schools is administered to the seat of the student's trousers or skirt with a specially-made wooden paddle. This often used to take place in the classroom or hallway, but nowadays the punishment is usually given privately in the principal's office.

Most public school districts lay down detailed rules as to how the ceremony is to be carried out, and in many cases these are published in the school's student-parent handbook.

Individual US states have the power to ban corporal punishment in their schools. The 20 states that have not banned it are mostly in the South. It is still used to a significant (though declining) degree in some public schools in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

The most recent state to outlaw school corporal punishment was Ohio in 2009.

Private schools in most states are exempt from state bans and may choose to use the paddle. Here too, most of those which actually do so are to be found in Southern states. These are largely, but by no means exclusively, Christian evangelical or fundamentalist schools.

The anti-spanking campaign Center for Effective Discipline, extrapolating from sample statistics collected by federal authorities, estimates that the number of students spanked or paddled in 2006 in U.S. public schools was about 223,000.

Statistics show that black students are more likely to be paddled than white students. This might be because black Americans tend to be more in favour of spanking than white ones on average, so are more likely to give teachers permission to spank their children -- although a study in Kentucky found that minority students were disproportionately targeted by discipline policies generally, not only corporal punishment.

Federal statistics consistently show that around 80% of school paddlings in the U.S. are of boys, most likely because boys exhibit more often than girls the kinds of misbehaviour for which corporal punishment is thought appropriate.

U.S. States Banning School Corporal Punishment
Thirty U.S. states and the District of Columbia have banned corporal punishment from use in public schools. The states, in chronological order of the year they banned, are: New Jersey - 1867 Massachusetts - 1971 Hawaii - 1973 Maine - 1975 District of Columbia - 1977 New Hampshire -	1983 New York - 1985 Vermont - 1985 California - 1986 Nebraska - 1988 Wisconsin - 1988 Alaska - 1989 Connecticut - 1989 Iowa - 1989 Michigan - 1989 Minnesota - 1989 North Dakota - 1989 Oregon - 1989 Virginia - 1989 South Dakota - 1990 Montana - 1991 Utah - 1992 Illinois - 1993 Maryland - 1993 Nevada - 1993 Washington - 1993 West Virginia - 1994 Rhode Island - 2002 Delaware - 2003 Pennsylvania - 2005 Ohio - 2009

The Ohio ban in 2009 was signed into law by Governor Ted Strickland on 17 July 2009, and enforcement of the ban began on 15 October 2009.

Uruguay
Outlawed with effect from 2008 under a law, "Prohibición del castigo físico", which applies both to parents/guardians and to schools.