Texas holds tight to tradition on corporal punishment

By Mark ColletteNovember 14, 2014 Updated: November 18, 2014 11:03am

FILE - In this Aug. 1, 2014, file photo, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson gives his son Adrian Jr. a kiss following an NFL football training camp practice in Mankato, Minn. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

HARDIN - Running back Adrian Peterson, fighting what is now a season-long suspension from the NFL, acknowledged he is learning disciplinary techniques as alternatives to the whipping that landed him in court.

His home state of Texas, on the other hand, is reluctant to let go of the switch.

It outlawed beating prisoners in 1941. But in the 2011-12 school year, the state physically punished nearly 30,000 students.

Across the rural South, parents cling to the combination of folk wisdom, nostalgia and scripture that inspire them not to spare the rod. They demand it remain an option in schools, and even chastise administrators who refuse to do it. Paddlings are so ingrained in Texas culture that students are opted in by default. Parents must sign forms at the beginning of each school year if they don't want their kids hit. They didn't even have that option until 2012.

Interactive map: Texas school districts that allow corporal punishment

Those in red allow corporal punishment. Click on a district to see how many students were punished this way in the 2011-12 school year.

Most Americans approve of spanking at home, despite research showing it might inflict lasting psychological damage and does little to correct behavior. Critics of those studies say they don't account for the obvious chicken-egg problem: Punished children were misbehaving, so they were already more likely to have problems later on.

Texas and 18 other states hold fast to laws that give not just parents, but school employees, codified approval to keep popping, spanking, swatting or paddling.

More than 4 out of 10 Texas school districts struck misbehaving students, often with a wooden paddle, in 2011-12, the most recent records available. Nationwide, school officials were more likely to hit black students than white ones, and the paddle landed disproportionately on the backsides of disabled children.

The findings are part of a Chronicle analysis of U.S. Department of Education data collected from across the nation, including more than 45,000 campuses in the 19 states that allow corporal punishment at school.

As widespread as the practice remains, it is on a steep decline. No children received paddlings in Texas' largest urban districts, where school boards banned it. But educators indicate pops in the principal's office will never disappear without legislation, because Texas is a state of entrenched rural values and emphasis on local control. Statewide bans failed at least nine times since 1987. None of the bills made it out of committee.

RELATED

Case lays bare nation's tangled views of corporal punishment Falkenberg: Does using the rod on a child spoil the mind? Peterson avoids jail time with plea, hopes to resume NFL career

This year in Hardin, the school district with the highest rate of paddlings in greater Houston, only four parents signed opt-out slips, administrators said. They did it because they preferred to inflict the punishment themselves.

It's a district of about 6,900 people and six Baptist churches on the edge of the Pine Curtain, where Texas conservatism hardens with every eastward step. Most folks were born and raised here. They work for the district, the largest employer, or make the hour commute to the industrial complexes outside Houston.

In towns like this across rural Texas, they grow rather than recruit their educators. Superintendent Bob Parker, beaming with pride over a district that exceeded state standards four years running, started in Hardin 45 years ago before moving around the state and eventually returning to the administration office here. His lieutenant, curriculum director Tammie Marberry, graduated from Hardin High School in 1983.

Back then, teachers hit kids in the hallway. Later, only principals could do it, and it had to be in the office. Then they had to have a witness.

HOUSTON

Momentum gathers in Houston for Obama's immigration order New jury returns Harris County man to death row for 1987 slaying Around the area & state: Suspect sought in fatal shooting at gas John Goodman sentenced to 16 years for DUI manslaughter 1 dead in gas station shooting near downtown Mourners gather to remember DuPont workers

Today, each school has a discipline coordinator who calls parents before a paddling. The person is trained on how to explain the disciplinary action to the student and how to administer the licks with the paddle - a varnished wooden board about as thick as a deck of cards and as long as a man's forearm - so as not to injure, never more than three times. At the high school, that person is Assistant Principal Ronald Scott, a 6-foot-4-inch former college football lineman whose sheer presence can be enough to dissuade potential mischief-makers.

Scott doesn't like using corporal punishment. Parker and Marberry don't, either. At the middle schools, the new assistant principal, who is also new to Hardin, doesn't believe in it.

Marberry said she has seen firsthand that depriving a student of 45 minutes of social time by assigning lunch detention is far more effective than a few licks, especially with older students.

As more school officials reach the same conclusions, the rate of corporal punishment is plummeting, down 80 percent in Texas from 2001 to 2012. In Hardin, the decline was slower, about 24 percent. But only two students have received paddlings in the first nine weeks of school this year, Marberry said. At that rate, the district will paddle only eight students, down from 40 in 2012.

Interactive: Which students are punished this way?

Below are three Texas school districts with large disparities in the use of corporal punishment between black and white students. The numbers represent percentages based on enrollment for each race. Each district had at least 10 students of each race punished.

Yet paddling remains an option here because school officials don't answer to studies. They answer to their community. And the locally elected school board has never had a challenge to the corporal punishment policy. Parents like Kim Wolfe would be outraged.

At home, her disciplinary method of choice is to revoke privileges. School is a different matter. Her 13-year-old son had recurrent discipline problems in second grade, but those settled down after he was treated for attention deficit disorder. Still, he's a normal teenager, she said, and occasionally acts out at school.

"You can misbehave all day long at home - that's fine, I can handle that," she said. "But when you take yourself out in the community, out in town or at school, you best be on your best behavior because we do not raise fools. You will mind your manners, you will follow the rules, and you will be respectful. If you can't do those three things, you will get your butt tore up."

Wolfe has knocked heads with school officials who at times didn't want to dole out swats when she requested them.

The practice worked for her, for her family, for her husband and for his family. She says it's the same for almost everyone she knows in town, though she allows that it may not work for everyone.

And that's what state Rep. Alma Allen is up against, trying to ban what's considered a generations-old builder of character. To the Houston Democrat, a black educator representing a minority district, it is a vestige of slavery, and the data that show school officials disproportionately hit black boys suggests an obvious regression: "Let me do what I want to do with my child. It's mine. I can beat it. I can stomp it. I can do whatever I want to do to it."

Yet corporal punishment is not evenly rejected in black America. In Peterson's hometown, some said switchings were part of growing up under segregation, of an understanding that black kids were held to a different standard and so needed the sternest discipline. NBA commentator Charles Barkley sparked debate when he equated lashings to a black rite of passage.

Allen sits on the House Public Education Committee with fellow black Democrat and Houston Rep. Harold Dutton, who has resisted Allen's efforts and even authored laws to ensure families can continue to hit their children at home.

Against the muddle of culture, science, religion and history that have shaped the nation's evolving views on hitting kids, another factor may be most responsible for bans in urban centers.

"Corporal punishment does nothing but expose the teacher to liability," said Gayle Fallon, president of the union that represents teachers in the Houston Independent School District. It passed a ban in 2001.

Peterson ran into the same problem: While Texas law gives both school employees and parents some immunity for using corporal punishment, the line between legal hitting and abuse can be subjective.

"It was amazing how quickly the school district would cut (a teacher) loose if someone came in with an allegation," Fallon said. So the union, which once demanded to have all disciplinary options on the table, changed course.

Allen will reintroduce her bill in the 2015 legislative session.

It will face an uphill battle from lawmakers who represent districts like Hardin, where fear of liability continues to take a backseat to deeply held custom.

Data reporter Matt Dempsey contributed to this story.

Mark Collette

Investigative Reporter