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“He’s traumatized,” said Brady, who said she was not called before her son was struck, nor told afterward how many blows he had endured. The police declined to get involved, Brady said. Later, she filed a lawsuit over the incident — and lost.
There, corporal punishment is mostly legal.
More than 15 states, mainly in the South, allow paddling or other physical discipline in schools. Among them, Mississippi has long topped the list, relying on the practice more than any other, according to federal data. Most schools in America — more than 90 percent — do not use corporal punishment.
Scott County, a central-Mississippi school district with 4,000 students, recorded more than 630 incidents during the school year that ended in June, according to state data provided to The Washington Post. Brady’s district — Prentiss County, with more than 2,200 students — used it 34 times, about once a school week.
Critics say the practice is underreported. It also varies by race and gender, with boys far more likely to get hit than girls. Black boys, in particular, were twice as likely to be paddled or struck at school as White boys across the United States, according to federal officials. Students with disabilities were also at greater risk.
Children are physically punished for a range of behaviors — talking too much, disrupting class, breaking rules, tardiness. Some Mississippi districts say it’s not their first option to correct behavior but a tool to use after other measures fail. Typically another person must be present, and the punisher’s approach must be “reasonable,” not malicious or vengeful.
Yet psychologists and scholars say the practice is not just outlandish in 2023 but also ineffective in changing behavior and at odds with modern approaches geared toward preventing problems, learning from mistakes and understanding childhood trauma. For years, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have weighed in against corporal punishment in schools.
Adults who were spanked as children exhibited more antisocial behavior and had more mental health problems, according to a study co-authored by Elizabeth Gershoff, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies corporal punishment. Two more recent studies show that the outcomes linked with corporal punishment at home are also associated with its use at school, she said.
In other work, Gershoff and fellow researchers found that a history of spankings was linked to more depressive symptoms, more suicide attempts, more moderate to heavy drinking, and more drug use.
Defenders of corporal punishment see important lessons in delivering firm consequences when children break the rules.
Some say that the threat of being struck is a powerful motivator that keeps kids in line. They look to their own lives, having been spanked or belted by parents or other relatives, concluding that their experiences show that it works. And in the nation’s “Bible Belt,” religion is also central, including Bible passages that many interpret as suggesting that when parents “spare the rod,” they spoil a child.
In Mississippi, each school district decides whether to permit corporal punishment — and a number of them have banned it. But even the most frequent practitioners don’t necessarily defend the practice. They say it’s up to parents.
Now families often can sign a form to opt their children in or out of physical discipline. But if they decline, a child may be sent home or suspended for misbehaving — an impractical option for parents in low-wage jobs who don’t have the flexibility to take time off work or forgo hourly pay. Many also want their children to stay in school, learning.
For them, it’s a choice only in theory.
Parents’ wishes are not always followed, either. Valerie Bell, of Cleveland, Miss., said she had not consented to it when her then-third-grader was physically punished for talking in class. Aware of her mother’s objections, the girl protested and placed her hand over her buttocks. The administrator delivered three licks anyway, injuring two of her fingers, according to Bell.
“They were black and blue,” Bell said, adding that she was told in the emergency room that the 8-year-old’s swollen fingers were sprained and one was mildly fractured. They were placed in a brace and taped.
Her daughter, now in eighth grade, described the paddle to her mother as long and wooden, with circle-shaped holes. Bell said she repeatedly asked the school to see the object that fall, in 2018, to no avail.
She complained to the school board, which referred her to a board lawyer, but she never heard back, she said. “Some teachers, some principals, take it to the extreme,” she said, lamenting that small missteps lead to such harsh punishment.
Cleveland School District officials say the incident occurred during a previous administration but that the board’s counsel conducted a full investigation and “made some personnel decisions, which are confidential,” according to Jamie Lee, an attorney representing the district. They do not recall following up with Bell afterward.
Corporal punishment is still allowed, he said, under guidelines that follow Mississippi law. But Superintendent Lisa Bramuchi has directed staff to “focus on more positive behavior reinforcement tactics rather than those practices which punish,” he said.
When Tijuanda Beckworth’s son was in middle school a decade ago in Leflore County in the Mississippi Delta, a principal paddled him. She did not know at the time; her son told her years later. The practice was more common then, affecting more than 100,000 students nationally. By 2017-18, the total had dropped to about 70,000.
Beckworth still sees the upside of the practice.
“I don’t think corporal punishment was put in place to be abusive,” she said. “From what I see, as a parent and a disciplinarian, you have to have accountability. There have to be consequences for their actions.”
Beckworth, a leader in the Greenwood chapter of the national organization Parents for Public Schools, believes in partnering with schools, which she said have done well by her two children, who graduated at the top of their classes. “I trust that the teachers and the school are doing what’s in the best interest of my child,” she said. “The number one thing that’s important is learning.”
Lora Evans, another leader in the local Parents for Public Schools chapter, whose son also once got the paddle years ago, was not bothered then but now would stop corporal punishment. “I think we need some type of alternatives because I don’t know if it deters the behavior,” she said.
A former school board member in Greenwood, she also would like to know more about the experiences of districts that have banned it. “Once something is taken out, it must be replaced with something else,” she said.
Nationally, support for the practice is diminishing. By 2018, use of corporal punishment had fallen 35 percent in four years. More recent data from several states, including Mississippi and Arkansas, suggests a far steeper plunge since then. In Mississippi, the state’s total of more than 24,000 incidents in 2018-19 plummeted to fewer than 4,000 last year. Arkansas’s drop was not quite as sharp but still fell more than 70 percent from 2017-18 to 2021-22.
The recent decline is partly explained by the coronavirus pandemic, when students spent less time in school buildings, and changing attitudes.
But a larger factor may be legislation to limit the practice. In Mississippi, a 2019 law made corporal punishment unlawful for students with disabilities. Several superintendents said in interviews that it led to a precipitous drop in their districts’ use of physical discipline or ended it.
Nationally, Colorado banned the practice earlier this year, and civil rights and education organizations have called attention to the issue repeatedly.
Officials in President Biden’s administration said they expect to release more recent data on the use of corporal punishment sometime this year. In March, the administration called on state and local leaders to end the practice, citing negative effects on behavior, mental health and academic performance.
“The practice of corporal punishment is antithetical to positive child and adolescent development and school safety,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote in a letter to education officials across the country.
Schools often use long, hardwood paddles to physically punish students. They have also used their hands, rulers and other objects, often striking the buttocks after a child is told to bend over.
A 2019 study co-authored by Gershoff, which surveyed young adults in states that allow corporal punishment, found that 82 percent of those struck at school experienced “some” pain. One in four said it was “very” or “extremely” painful, and 22 percent recalled bruises or other injuries.
Among reactions that they reported were anger, embarrassment and fear.
Afterward the experience may shape how children see school, said Crystal Brewer, chair of the Magnolia State School Counselor Association in Mississippi. “School needs to be a place where kids feel safe and trust that the adults genuinely care for them,” she said.
Tessa Davis, a parent in central Arkansas who grew up with corporal punishment, did not question that part of school life as she and her husband raised their children. But when their kindergartner got into a tussle at lunch, she said, the family confronted the issue anew. She described it as “a Catch 22, like he either gets a paddling and goes back to school the next day or he gets three days of suspension.”
Davis regretted allowing the vice principal to paddle her son. Adopted through foster care, her son had learning disabilities and already struggled. He is biracial and the school was largely White. And then, she said, he was being hit as a punishment for hitting.
Afterward, he didn’t want to go back to school: “He didn’t feel like they liked him,” she said. Davis has come to see the practice as antiquated and at odds with research about child well-being. She joined the group Arkansans Against School Paddling. “It just seems ridiculous that people still use it,” she said.
Many states that allow corporal punishment in public schools have barred it in child-care settings, foster care homes and juvenile detention centers, raising questions about why schools are an exception. Adding to the complexity, statewide bans on the practice typically focus on public schools, not private or religious ones.
The legal basis for the practice goes back in large part to 1977, when it was far more common in schools and the U.S. Supreme Court found that it did not violate constitutional protections against “cruel and unusual” punishment or due process guarantees.
Since then, states have banned it, as have many school districts.
Ametra McNeal, a parent in Grenada, Miss., signed a form opting out. When she was a kid, her principal walked the halls clutching a paddle, she said. If he came upon a student who had been sent into the hallway for misbehavior, he would use it, she said. “You could hear those licks down the hall,” she said.
“As a mother, I don’t like the idea of someone else hitting my child,” she said. “That’s just brutal. There has to be something other than that.”
Others seek alternatives, too, including Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, who said her teachers’ organization wants an end to the practice.
Many schools work to recognize and promote positive behavior. When kids cross the line, they rely on warnings, counseling, parent conferences, revoking privileges, in-school detentions or restorative practices to make up for damage done. More significant missteps may involve suspensions or other punishments.
“Even though parents may be in favor of corporal punishment to some extent, they don’t necessarily approve of it being done by people at school,” said Joann Mickens, executive director of the national organization Parents for Public Schools, based in Jackson, Miss.
Where change comes slowly
This year, Scott County Public Schools recorded more corporal punishment than any other district in Mississippi — delivering punishment by paddle 637 times in 2022-23, according to state data.
This part of the state is chicken country — 610 square miles of rural living with a bevy of poultry growers and processing plants. Artful replicas of roosters brighten the downtown streets of Forest, the county seat. Tractor-trailers with live birds and fresh timber clatter along a main highway one day. Elsewhere in the county, struggling families dwell in rusted trailers and run-down houses.
The area is not part of the Mississippi Delta, but Superintendent Alan Lumpkin said he sees similarities in its challenges. All of its public schools serve high-poverty populations.
According to the district’s student handbook, parents must meet with the principal in person at the beginning of each school year to opt out of corporal punishment. They must also agree to remove their child from school immediately when called.
Lumpkin did not answer directly when asked whether he believed hitting a child with a paddle improves behavior. He said he took exception to the word “hit,” preferring instead to call it “corporal punishment.”
“The parent is in control of whether corporal punishment is used,” he said.
School board members said that they had not fielded complaints about corporal punishment and that they had no idea their district was the state’s top paddler.
Board Vice President Greg Nicks, who was once a principal, said he found it “alarming” that the district was reaching for the paddle far more than others. Parents and teachers may need counseling on other ways to elicit student cooperation, he said. One day Mississippi will end the practice, he said.
But not everyone thinks it’s time. “I think it’s a good thing,” Ben Byram, another board member, said. “You have to punish kids for bad decisions, and if you don’t — if you can’t paddle them, which is over in five seconds — you have to suspend them.” Suspensions keep kids out of class, taking them away from instruction and hurting their grades — which is worse, he said.
Mississippi counted more than 3,800 incidents of corporal punishment in 2022-23. The data showed racial disparities. Last school year, Black students accounted for 47 percent of the state’s enrollment but 54 percent of students who’d received corporal punishment. White students made up 43 percent of enrollment but 39 percent of those corporally punished.
Some see the punishment as a vestige of Mississippi’s past under Jim Crow, with Black children treated unequally and subject to harsh practices that are banned elsewhere in the country. “What you’re seeing is a historical echo,” said Stacey Patton, a child advocate and author of the book “Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America.”
The numbers don’t give the full picture either, said Ellen Reddy, head of the Mississippi Coalition to End Corporal Punishment, who maintains that some school incidents are not counted. Reddy operates from the Nollie Jenkins Family Center in Durant, Miss. She added that parent consent should not be sought or allowed.
“I strongly disagree that a parent has a right to consent for a child to be brutalized,” she said.
In Booneville, Miss., where Kayla Brady’s son was paddled as a fifth-grader, the bruises of his childhood lasted two weeks, she said.
For the family, the issue lasted longer.
Brady hired a lawyer and sued the principal and school district, arguing in part that her son was on a no-paddle list and she never gave the principal permission to strike her child as he did. The school district said she had, according to court documents. Brady said the district offered to settle the case for $5,500, but she could not say anything about it if she accepted the settlement. She refused. She said she did not want it to happen to another child.
Circuit Court Judge James L. Roberts Jr. presided over a two-day trial in 2017. The principal’s paddle was in the courtroom, Brady said — flat and wooden, a couple of feet in all, she guessed — “not as long as a yardstick.” Her son sat quietly, scared and upset, she said. Contacted in July, the then-principal declined to comment.
In his October 2017 opinion, Roberts said the boy and two others were involved in “horseplay” in the boys’ bathroom — which a teacher reported to the principal, who then delivered “three licks of a wooden paddle” to the fifth-grader’s buttocks. The teacher testified the principal did not seem irritated or angry as he struck the boy, the judge wrote.
And while photos taken by Kayla Brady showed redness and bruising on the boy’s buttocks, the judge said his injuries “did not require medical treatment and healed completely.” The judge said the paddling occurred “in a reasonable manner,” without bad faith, malicious purpose or “a wanton and willful disregard of human rights or safety.”
More than eight years later, Brady still has the photos — and strong feelings about hitting kids at school. “They don’t know what a child is going through,” she said. “They just want to spank them because they’re not acting like they want them to.”
In the family’s school system, the practice lives on. Prentiss County still mentions corporal punishment in its 2023-24 handbook for students, saying the practice can be used as a “maximum punishment” for flagrant or repeated low-level infractions — running in the halls, tardiness, dress code violations, public displays of affection, pushing and shoving. Last school year, it was used 31 times, state data showed. School officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Brady’s son, who recently turned 20, declined an interview with The Washington Post. His mother said he sees the episode as a piece of the past that he has no interest in probing anew. He said she could talk about what happened, but he is out of school, part of the working world now. He would rather let it go.
St. George reported from Jackson, Miss., and Washington.
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