Spare the Rod or Swing the Paddle: How to Punish Students

July 23, 2008 — -- It may be a declining practice in American schools, frowned upon by most child psychologists, but school officials in one Georgia county are reinstituting corporal punishment for students who misbehave.

When school resumes after summer vacation, principals in Twiggs County will be allowed to use paddles to spank students who don't respond to detention or other forms of discipline, reaffirming a policy that had lain dormant in the county since 2006.

The district is one of at least 150 school systems in the state that allow corporal punishment, according to school board chairman David Sanders, who said the practice is reserved for "acts that are so anti-social or disruptive as to shock the conscience."

Sanders told ABCNews.com that he has not experienced opposition from parents and said students will only be paddled if their parents have given their permission at the start of the school year. The paddling also has to be witnessed by another teacher or school staffer, he said. Students as young as 4 can receive the punishment, according to school policy.

Sanders does not know, however, the last time that a student was punished physically in the county's school district.

The once-common practice, which involves smacking a student's backside with a wooden paddle, has been abolished in 29 states and is still legal in 21 states, although it is only routinely practiced in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee.

Some states, including California, Illinois and New York, have banned corporal punishment in public schools, but allow it in private schools.

The practice has rapidly declined in recent decades – in 1980, 1.4 million students were paddled compared to 223,000 students in the 2006-07 school year. Less than half of one percent of students are punished this way in U.S. public schools.

Yet parents in Twiggs County seem supportive of the policy.

Sallie Walters, the mother of a child in the Twiggs County Elementary School, said she believes the school's decision to allow teachers to use physical punishment is a good one.