Leah Savage

Corporal Punishment Debate Speech

Corporal punishment is inefficient, unsafe, and unethical. Corporal punishment doesn't correct the path of the recipient,
associating fear and pain with misbehavior rather than a clear idea of the right behavior. According to "We Don't Lynch People
Anymore--And We Don't Spank Children," by George Diaz, very small children don't have the intellectual competence to comprehend
why they're being physically punished. They may understand that they have done something wrong, but may not understand what it is
or why they are being punished. This can also carry into older students. Even if a student is punished, the student may continue to
misbehave after a teacher or principal has gone, since they haven't been taught the principle of right and wrong. According to "Point:
The Negative Impact of Corporal Punishment," by Anne Stokely, corporal punishment may create good short-term behavior by the
recipient, but over time brews animosity from the student towards the punisher, taking away the focus from the act itself. Physical
punishment "trains obedience out of fear." Recipients work on changing their behavior to escape another punishment rather than
reflection on their behavior based on right and wrong. Anne Stokely, in "Point: The Negative Impact of Corporal Punishment," writes
that evidence shows that bad behavior may develop with corporal punishment, as it doesn't consider the reason for the misbehavior.
One study showed that antisocial behavior increased when children were spanked for their antisocial behavior. According to Allison
Hughes in "Spanking is Passe," "Every behavior has a function. There is a reason for everything we do. But spanking does not take the
"why" into account. If you truly want to eliminate a bad behavior, you have to figure out what motivated it." A uniform spanking or
paddling for misbehavior in schools may create submissiveness, but does not tackle the root of the problem and the reason for the
misbehavior.
Corporal punishment can easily become child abuse. Teachers or administrators may spank students out of anger, and the line
between abuse and corporal punishment can be crossed in times of frustration. Teachers, as role models to students, are thus showing,

Leah Savage
Corporal Punishment Debate Speech
according to Anne Stokely in "Point: The Negative Impact of Corporal Punishment,"a model of impulsive violence and lack of selfcontrol to children." Students are taught that corporal punishment is based off of a teacher's anger, rather than a punishment for the act
itself. Parents who have given permission for their students to be corporally punished have been astonished at the punishment their
children have received. One example is North Carolinian parent Tina Morgan, who allowed her son to be paddled by his middle school.
When he came home from school one day with a backside covered in colored bruises, she was outraged that the school would go so far.
In Wichita Falls, Texas, the assistant principal of Tyler Anastopolous, a junior, paddled his backside for skipping detention. He came
home with deep bruises and had to be hospitalized for their severity. Angie Herring, his mother, was livid and is quoted saying, If I
did that to my son, Id go to jail.
Paddling also harms the relationship between the student and teacher. The student is force to take a position where the students
fear him or her, and may be forced to use corporal punishment if that's the only system of discipline in a school. According to
"Corporal Punishment in Schools and Its Effect on Academic Success" from Human Rights Watch, one Mississippi student described
her school's take on corporal punishment as: "[Y]ou could get a paddling for almost anything. I hated it. It was used as a way to
degrade, embarrass students. . . I said I'd never take another paddling, it's humiliating, it's degrading. Some teachers like to paddle
students. Paddling causes you to lose respect for a person, stop listening to them."
Where paddling is allowed, it is used more against minority students than others. Rachel Chason writes in "More schools opt to
spare the rod," from Opposing Viewpoints in Context, that "a 2008 Human Rights Watch report showed that although AfricanAmerican students made up 17.1% of the student population nationwide, they made up 35.6% of those paddled." According to
"Corporal Punishment in Schools and Its Effect on Academic Success" from Human Rights Watch, at a high school in Mississippi a

Leah Savage
Corporal Punishment Debate Speech
student said, "every time you walk down the hall you see a black kid getting whipped. I would say out of the whole school there's only
about three white kids who have gotten paddled."
Disabled students are also corporally punished more than other students. A Human Rights Report notes that children
with disabilities in Texas made up 10.7% of the student population in the 2006-07 school year, but accounted for 18.4% of those
paddled. The American Civil Liberties Union did a study in 2009 and found that disabled students account for 14% of the national
student population, but make up 19% of the recipients of corporal punishment in the 2006-2007 school year. The ACLU also wrote that
there can be "...long-lasting psychological consequences. Students with disabilities may see their underlying conditions worsened as a
result [of corporal punishment]." According to "Corporal Punishment in Schools and Its Effect on Academic Success" from Human
Rights Watch, the grandmother of an Oklahoman student with Asperger's syndrome drew her grandson out of school because of the
excessive use of corporal punishment, saying, "It made him much more introverted. He very much didn't want to go to school . . . No
one's supposed to go to school to be tortured, school is supposed to be fun."