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Corporal Punishment
Historically, corporal punishment (CP) has been defined as the infliction of pain, loss, or confinement of the human body—as distinguished from financial consequence—as a penalty for some offense. In the past, it was a common civil penalty used on citizens, slaves, sailors, and school children. Parental spanking, in contemporary times, is defined as the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury, for purposes of correction or control of the child's behavior (Straus, 1994).
In contemporary educational settings, CP is generally synonymous with paddling for breaking a school rule. However, because of case law, the definition has expanded to include any punishment that includes the infliction of pain that results in unreasonable discomfort (Hyman, 1997). CP includes excessive physical drills, shaking, making students stand for long periods in uncomfortable positions, excessive time in time-out rooms, tying students in time-out chairs, not allowing use of bathroom facilities for unreasonable periods of time, and forcing children to ingest obnoxious substances. In school settings, the legal definition of corporal punishment does not cover the use of force or restraint to protect one's self, another, and property; to obtain weapons; or to prevent students from harming themselves.
Incidence of Corporal Punishment
A study by Burns (1992) found that 85% of the American population approved of corporal punishment, compared to 64% of Austrians and 37% of Swedes. Straus and Kantor (1994) examined the reported use of corporal punishment and found that more than 90% of Americans used corporal punishment, and 84% found spanking to be necessary and harmless.
Currently, the United States is one of few western democracies in which the use of CP in the schools is still legal. Internationally, most industrialized, European democracies eliminated the use of corporal punishment by the end of the 20th century. In 1967, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively ban corporal punishment in schools, followed in 1972 by Massachusetts.
As of 2004, the following 28 states have banned corporal punishment in the schools: Alaska (1989), California (1986), Connecticut (1989), Delaware (2003), Hawaii (1973), Illinois (1993), Iowa (1989), Maine (1975), Maryland (1993), Massachusetts (1971), Michigan (1989), Minnesota (1989), Montana (1991), Nebraska (1988), Nevada (1993), New Hampshire (1983), New Jersey (1967), New York (1985), North Dakota (1989), Oregon (1989), Rhode Island (all local boards have banned), South Dakota (1990), Utah (1992), Vermont (1985), Virginia (1989), Washington (1993), West Virginia (1994), Wisconsin (1988). In addition, Pennsylvania is close to passing a CP ban.
In addition to statewide bans on corporal punishment, most major cities and affluent suburbs have banned it. Research, especially data collected in biannual Office of Civil Rights (OCR) surveys, suggests that most legal use of corporal punishment occurs in rural areas and in schools in the South and Southwest. Data from the first OCR survey in 1976 suggested at that time there were at least two to three million incidents in all of the schools in America (Hyman, 1997). This is in comparison to the last survey available from the U.S. Department of Education, in which 365,058 public school paddlings occurred in the 1997–1998 academic year (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Since most parochial schools forbid the use of corporal punishment, the remainder of incidents occur in various religious schools and academies that adhere to literal interpretations of the Bible as a guide for discipline (Hyman, 1997).
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