Why The Hell Is Spanking Teens Still Allowed In Texas High Schools? * 2 years ago by Lindsay Cross
There’s a debate going on at Springtown High School near Fort Worth, Texas. It’s about whether corporal punishment should be conducted by someone the same gender as the offending student. One mother says yes. One school superintendent says no. And I say, “Why the hell are high school students in Texas still being paddled?”
Taylor Santos is a respected student and athlete at Springtown High. She let another student copy off of her work, which is obviously a violation of the honor code in every school known to man. As a punishment, Taylor could take two days of in-school suspension, or she could choose to accept a paddling. That’s right, Texas still allows and apparently uses corporal punishment. You know, the practice that you assumed ended a couple decades ago? The form of discipline that’s been denounced over and over again by child psychologists? Yea, that kind of corporal punishment.
Santos didn’t want to miss any class serving out her punishment, she so decided to accept the paddling. However, when she talked to her mother about this decision, they both assumed that the spanking would be carried out by a female, as was school district policy. Instead, a male vice principal administered the paddling and Taylor’s behind looked “burned and blistered” according to her mother.
That’s when this mom decided to take her issue to the school board, hoping to make sure that males would paddle males and females would paddle females. She explained, “I don’t believe a man intentionally meant to do that to her, but it still happens, because men are too big and strong to be hitting 96-pound girls.” I would just like to note that men are capable of controlling themselves and how hard they hit someone, like a teenage girl in a school setting.
This whole story is insane. And it again raises the question, wasn’t spanking in schools officially dead years ago? Spanking in the home is frowned upon now, and we still have principals using corporal punishment as a form of discipline? I’m just astonished.
For teenagers, I don’t even see how a paddling would be effective, unless we’re talking about using it as a form of humiliation. I suppose it could embarrass students into better behavior. I don’t see how anyone could claim that the physical pain will actually teach a lesson to a high school student. Teens are capable of rational thought, they don’t need lessons beaten into them.
It’s worth noting that parents are able to opt out of corporal punishment for their children in the state of Texas. Taylor Santos’s mother approved of the paddling, though she was under the assumption that it would be done by a female. Springtown Superintendent Mike Kelley believes that the same gender policy is difficult to adhere to on some campuses. I’d love to get involved in that debate, but I would have to first wrap my head around the fact that people in this country are still SPANKING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AS A FORM OF DISCIPLINE.
You can reach this post's author, Lindsay Cross, on twitter or via e-mail at LindsayCross@gmail.com.