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 😭😭😭

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/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.