Spanking Little Kids and Voting Tendencies, USA

To your left you see a map  of the 2004 Electoral College breakdown.  The states in blue went with the Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry.  The red states went for George W. Bush.  As you see most of Bush's electoral strength was in the South and the Midwest.  Now please take a look at the map below this one.

 

 

 

 

  This is a 2006 map showing the number of student spankings taking place in public-funded schools in the USA.  The darker the state is,  the more frequent is the number of spankings or "paddling" with a wooden board that a child received.  (You ca nrun your cursor over the state on the second map to see the number of spankings.) The darker states had more than a thousand recorded spankings; the lighter shaded states permit spanking but more a lower ratio of corporal punishment.  The light-shaded states are states that do not permit corporal punishment in the schools.  See any similarities?  It seems with the exception of the Virginias, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Nebraska, and the Dakotas,  George W Bush carried every state that lets teachers hit kids with impunity. Coincidence?   

Maybe if Barack Obama wants to win the election this year, he and Mrs. O should start whacking their kids with wood if they get out of line. 

I remember being paddled a few times in my school in California--until they stopped by my school district in 1968, when I was starting the third grade. The state of California banned corporal punishment state-wide in 1987.    

 Personally,I only remember being paddled twice, but one time it was very painful because a grown man--the principal--laid into me and starting whacking my hand with a ruler.  The reason for my punishment? I was wrestling with another kid just after recess.  Surely a six year old should have known better!   And surely an office smacking by a large, bald middle-aged adult was the only possible way I could learn not to fight with another six-year old.  

Later on, my school developed other ways of keeping us kids in line---missing recess by standing on the edge of a grassy lawn, at attention like a soldier, right by the principal's office,or  staying after school to write long sentences on the  chalkboard (a la Bart Simpson in a future time) , or getting put out of class into detention for a hour.

  Real thick-headed offenders were threatened with suspension from school.  Very few kids crossed that line in my day, and this worked very well with me because I couldn't imagine coming home and telling mom or dad I was out of school for a week. I'd be given a good verbal dressing down and then stuck in my room most of the time I was out!  No television and no transistor radio!  This potential state of affairs was more effective to me than taking any physical punishment.  

If parents want to spank their kids, well, that's their decision.  Personally, I don't want a teacher or some principal like the chucklehead who whacked me so hard hitting a kid. I  still remember it forty years on.  Physical punishment by strangers inflicted on children is nothing I'd want any child in my care to receive. Back then, my parents could keep me in line just fine with only a limited amount of "rear end" warming.        

  Seems like most of my friends I kept in touch with from those days  did well as adults when they achieved maturity, despite only having the opportunity to be paddled at school after age 8, if at all.     And its interesting who gets paddled most often as you will see from the reports below, as well as the fact that all European nations---a total of 100 countries in all--don't do it anymore. Anyway, I thought this was interesting.    

The AP story below is by Libby Quaid:   

 

WASHINGTON - Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2007 — and black children, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.

Even little kids can be paddled. Heather Porter, who lives in Crockett, Texas, was startled to hear her little boy, then 3, say he'd been spanked at school. Porter was never told, despite a policy at the public preschool that parents be notified.

"We were pretty ticked off, to say the least. The reason he got paddled was because he was untying his shoes and playing with the air conditioner thermostat," Porter said. "He was being a 3-year-old."

 

In its study, which was being released Wednesday, the group Human Rights Watch used Education Department data to show that, while paddling has been declining, racial disparity persists. Researchers also interviewed students, parents and school personnel in Texas and Mississippi, states that account for 40 percent of kids who were paddled in the 2007 school year.

Porter could have filled out a form telling the school not to paddle her son, if only she had realized he might be paddled.

Yet many parents find that such forms are ignored, the study said.

Legal immunity
Widespread paddling can make it unlikely that forms will be checked. A teacher interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Tiffany Bartlett, said that in her Austin, Texas, school, the policy was to lock the classroom doors when the bell rang, leaving stragglers to be paddled by an administrator patrolling the hallways.

And even if schools make a mistake, they are unlikely to face lawsuits. In places where corporal punishment is allowed, teachers and principals generally have legal immunity from assault laws, the study said.

"One of the things we've seen over and over again is that parents have difficulty getting redress, if a child is paddled and severely injured, or paddled in violation of parents' wishes," said Alice Farmer, the study's author.

A majority of states have outlawed it, but corporal punishment remains widespread across the South. Behind Texas and Mississippi were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri.