(NAME-MCE) New Report Calls to End Beating of Children in Public Schools

[Anselmo Villanueva]

To read the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report, "A
Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools,"
please visit: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36476res20080819.html
*
New Report Calls to End Beating of Children in Public Schools *


*Read the report, A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in
U.S. Public Schools.*<http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=8jgOOKHy1sk0bN13W2q_qg..>


A shocking report illuminates the state of disturbing forms of discipline in
U.S. schools. Released last week by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, the
report finds that more than 200,000 public school students in the U.S. were
punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year. Further, minorities
and students with mental and physical disabilities are punished at
disproportionately higher rates in the 13 states that corporally punished
more than 1,000 students per year -- despite no evidence that these students
commit disciplinary infraction at such disproportionate rates.

The report, *A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S.
Public Schools*, found that children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old
in Texas and Mississippi are routinely physically punished for minor
infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the
dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting.

Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of
"paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly
on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result
of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from
school.

"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids
teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh
Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report.
"Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior
and at times even provokes it."

The ACLU and Human Rights Watch call upon the U.S. government to prohibit
corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school
boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment
in their schools.



http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36478prs20080820.html

U.S.: End Beating of Children in Public Schools (8/20/2008)

*Abusive, Discriminatory Punishment Undermines Education*

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: hrwpress at hrw.org <hrwpress at hrworg> or media at aclu.org

DALLAS – More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by
beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the
American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the
13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year,
African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white
counterparts.

In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of
Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that
in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are
routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum,
talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more
serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21
states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an
administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long
wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children
are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids
teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh
Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report.
"Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior
and at times even provokes it."

The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is
most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate
that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and
African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be
expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary
infractions at disproportionate rates.

"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said
Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal
punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may
struggle even more."

Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at
disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their
development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of
students who were physically punished were special education students, even
though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.

"A Violent Education" is based on four weeks of on-the-ground research in
Mississippi and Texas in late 2007 and early 2008, including more than 175
interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators,
superintendents, and school board members.

The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the
point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity
under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for
injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and
courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in
trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school
districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for
their children, the forms are often ignored.

In the report, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch cite experts on best
practices in school discipline, who emphasize traditional approaches such as
detention, and modern approaches such as positive behavior support systems.
Positive behavior support systems, which are school-wide discipline systems
that stress a clear structure of rewards and consequences for student
behavior, have been effectively implemented in major U.S. school systems.
States and school boards that fail to implement best practices allow the
status quo, or school beatings, to remain in place.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call upon the U.S. government to prohibit
corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school
boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment
in their schools.

Selected Witness Accounts:

"He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto
the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire
under my butt."
– Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school
cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.

"The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them…
When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad
and you want to do something about it."
– Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.

"What made me so angry: he's three years old, he was petrified. He didn't
want to go back to school, and he didn't want to start his new school. I was
so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to
school with being paddled."
– Rose T., mother of a 3-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical
punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.

"I went into the principal's office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto
the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was
hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. …
It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost
welt-like markings. It didn't last for more than a couple days. … It left me
feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion.
Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was
like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That's weird… even at
that age I knew it was inappropriate."
– Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being
late to class multiple times.

"I've heard this said at my school and at other schools: 'This child should
get less whips, it'll leave marks.' Students that are dark-skinned, it takes
more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an
imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment."
– Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.

"I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was
how the headman got them to do something… we're focused so much on making
kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of
treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect
them. They leave that principal's office and they think, 'they don't
consider me a human being.' That young person loses self-respect."
– Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.

To read the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report, "A
Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools,"
please visit: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36476res20080819.html