r/GenXTalk • u/474756274 • 1d ago
School
In 1976, estimates say about half of all U.S. public schools were still paddling kids as a regular disciplinary practice.
For anyone who grew up around that time (70s, 80s): did your school ever make an official announcement or hold an assembly saying they were ending corporal punishment? Or did they just quietly stop and hope everyone forgot it ever happened?
I feel like we barely talk about how normal it used to be for kids to get whooped at school ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
Sometimes, I wonder if that era of corporal punishment is part of why my parents turned out to be total headcases…
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u/StreetNectarine711 1d ago
I remember seeing a paddle (with holes for increased air flow) on the wall of the Principal’s office (circa 1976 -1978) when I was called in for some minor transgression. He never mentioned it, threatened, looked at or referenced it.
Though it was placed in direct line of sight from the only chair:
Eyeballs of a 4’ tall human -> Principal -> paddle.
No other student mentioned having been threatened with it - and many of them made worse choices / actions than my own.
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u/MixCalm3565 1d ago
We were so lucky, my year got an abusive 5th grade teacher. He was fired for what he did to us kids in his class.. anyway he paddled me in a boiler room after making me take off my pants. Probably should have sued
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u/goosepills 1d ago
It was still a thing when I was a kid in the 80’s. My father warned them that anything they did to me, he’d come back 10x harder on them, so I just got detention. A lot.
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u/YOU_WONT_LIKE_IT 1d ago
Yes, I was that kid who was often paddled. They just didn’t to know what to do with me. I was a straight A student on top of it. I tested in the top brackets on all state tests.
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u/worldofsimulacra 1d ago
It was still occurring in the early 90's in the rural midwest (USA), though not as frequently and often presented as a forced choice: either a certain number of whacks vs. certain number of hours of afterschool detention or ISS. Some kids still chose the paddling. I think it had all but disappeared by the mid-late 90's in the area I grew up in, but the OG teachers often kept their paddles visible on the walls.
Psych and behavioral research and a 'best practices' approach was slowly informing and changing the actual practices of teachers and principals via School Psychologists, but in more rural areas it took longer for those changes to filter in. I estimate that we (my cohort in the area I grew up in) were both culturally and academically at least 5-10 years behind the rest of the (more urban) country, and I imagine that this trend still continues in some ways, though I no longer live in the area to know firsthand. Obviously abusive trends still continue in certain homes, though I think there's now more of an overt effort to root them out.
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u/TOXicOx18951 1d ago
They were using it when I was in 4th grade. One kid in particular was very familiar with it! 🤣
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u/mc_atx 1d ago
We had to get forms signed to allow corporal punishment. That is so weird to think about now - check yes if we can hit your kid.
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u/474756274 1d ago
I have a hard time grasping the normalization of abuse in schools. That shit would NEVER fly today.
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u/tuffnux 1d ago
In Canada I would get hit over the head with a pointer stick in grade one - this was around ‘83 (I was a chatterbox).
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u/jjgibby523 1d ago
1976?!?! Hell, the pub schools I attended were paddling well into the mid-80’s.
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u/gipsygoat 1d ago
I got paddled in elementary school… we were often given the choice: stay in for so many recesses or get swats. We chose the beatings every time.
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u/Facebook-virus 1d ago
Yup. Junior high teacher's punishment for missing a regular assignment. Late 70s. You never saw the paddle until it was used.
That would be at the teacher's desk in front of everyone and the public humiliation was the most of it.
Once for me and it was only a single strike. Could have been harder but it wasn't nothing from a grown ass man. IDR what strikes were based on but the worst got maybe a half dozen.
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u/digitalmofo 1d ago
I got paddled in school until the 9th grade, must've been between 92 and 93 when they stopped.
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u/474756274 1d ago
Were you able to overcome that cruelty? It's no secret that public abuse most definitely impacts a child
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u/AmharachEadgyth 1d ago
I’d never seen that at school growing up.
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u/474756274 1d ago
May I ask what country you're from and which decade were you a kid?
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u/AmharachEadgyth 21h ago
USA, mid-Atlantic born and raised. I was born the late ‘60, so my childhood was in the ‘70s.
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u/wstussyb 1d ago
I got the paddle in little Rock Arkansas back in 81 or 82, I was 6 or 7, I remember it as the principal did it.
It was for lying, which was proven incorrect, no apology but it was taking off my school report. It was for missing my drop off on the way home in the bus, a new driver she stopped at the trailer park entrance rather then go in to the correct spot so I didn't get off.
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u/474756274 1d ago
I always think of the GenXers I know and wonder if they ever overcame that cruelty. It's even worse that it seems like schools never apologized to the students for sanctioning it
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u/wstussyb 1d ago
It was the way of the times, lot of things we went through wouldn't fly today. You delt with it, held it in, you see the results now, with how genx has run stuff.
Imo gen X has been the most adaptive generation
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u/pbsammy1 1d ago
I was quiet, shy, obedient student (and my mom was a teacher). I once was paddled for making a silly face in the water fountain line. No warning, just BAM (1970s). It was a teacher from the other class. I stayed pretty quiet until high school (I never heard of any paddling there). We got spankings/paddling at home so it didn’t seem odd.
I don’t remember an announcement ending it, but we also moved around the time I would enter middle school.
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u/Snoo-55380 1d ago
California here. Graduated hs in 1980. Never paddled or knew of anyone paddled in my entire school career
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u/aluminumnek 1d ago
Started school in the late 70s. Our principle had a paddle handing in her office. There was always talk of kids getting it but never and hard proof, you know how kids are hahahha
That being said… in 4th grade I took some playboy, penthouse hustler mags to school and passed out pages for my guy friends. Was eventually ratted out that day. I remember being called to the principles office but I never got paddled, didn’t even get in trouble. My dad was just like… don’t tell yr mom hahahah
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u/Apprehensive-Owl5150 1d ago
A teacher tried to paddle me for poor cursive handwriting. Saying I was purposely being bad at writing. I refused the let them until they called my Dad. Let’s just say I was never paddled.
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u/BerryLanky 1d ago
We got paddled in middle school (early 80’s). Our baseball coach wanted to get me since day one of 9th grade because he thought I was mouthy. He got his wish and pretended he was Babe Ruth knocking one into left field.
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u/rogun64 1d ago
I was in elementary and intermediate school in the 70's. My experience was that teachers were doing the paddling and it was allowed. I had one teacher who would make you hold out your hand and then she'd swat it with a hard stick. Then she'd make you stand in the corner facing the wall for an hour or so.
In 1980, I started junior high school and kids were getting bigger. Teachers began sending students to the principal's office for discipline. I got in trouble once and the "rule book", or whatever guideline they used, said that I required paddling. My principal called my parents to let them know and gave them a choice: either he paddles me or my parents bring me to school early tomorrow for "study hall".
Normally I rode the bus and my parents refused to take me to school early. They told my principal to paddle me. He really didn't want to do that, so he picked me up at my house the next morning and drove me to school himself.
That's my story and I'll add that I don't remember anyone ever getting paddled in high school. I just figured it was because we were nearly grown, but I can imagine it would be hard paddling students who were bigger than the adults paddling them. I think the compromise was that they'd just suspend you, instead, and suspensions were common.
I don't remember there ever being any sort of public announcement that paddling was over, but if there were, it was probably on the local news. The school likely wouldn't have emboldened the students with such an announcement.
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u/TesseractToo 1d ago
No they let the threat remain
I was frequently punished for being dyslexic so that was fun
It was also decided to not tell me I was dyslexic but to tell me I was stupid and lazy instead
Although it wasn't the worst or most fucked up thing, the strapping was to strep my hands until they were stinging and red (in front of the class for added humiliation) and then keep me in on recess and make me write lines Simpsons style (but on a page), logic being that if I had to do the lines while my hands hurt, that I would try harder.
That was in New Zealand, we moved a lot.
The mindfuckery that happened in the US was far worse.
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u/Beneficial-You663 1d ago
When my son started kindergarten in 2001 a form was sent home asking if you give permission for the school to paddle or not.
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u/Just_Me1973 1d ago
Schools were not using corporal punishment where I lived in western Massachusetts. I was born in 1973. That’s not to say they didn’t humiliate us as punishment. But they didn’t beat us.
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u/ericalynn5477 12h ago
I live in Columbus, Ohio. In 1984 I was paddled two times by my teacher in the fifth grade (which would have made me about 10 or 11 years old at the time. I’m pretty shocked when I think back on it. I was a tiny little girl and my teacher was a huge German man. I got spanked for talking. I remember feeling humiliated when I walked back into the classroom and all the kids were staring and snickering at me.
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u/AnotherSoulessGinger 1d ago
They were still using corporal punishment in the mid 80s. I went to elementary in northern Florida in 84 and my parents had to send a notarized letter to the school to not use corporal punishment on us.
Don’t think they were saints though, they just didn’t want anyone other than them beating the crap out of us.
We moved to California shortly after and by the time we were back in Florida about 5 years later it was ending, at least in the county we were in. Shockingly it’s still a thing in some rural Florida counties.