Should Corporal Punishment Be Allowed in Schools?

Kianna Hall

Professor McHugh

ENG 111 Argumentative Essay

29 November 17

Should corporal punishment be allowed in public schools?

The issue of corporal punishment has been one of the most widely talked about topics with regards to education. Corporal punishment is referred to as the act of applying physical pain to someone as a form of punishment to a mistake that they made. It is a form of punishment where someone is hit physically in order to correct them. This issue has been a major topic of discussion across America. While there are several states that have distinctly banned corporal punishment in schools, a number of states still have laws that technically allow it.  Some would agree that corporal punishment is ineffective, immoral, and exposes children to the possibility of mood disorders. Corporal punishment is a delicate matter which may negatively affect students and as such should be abolished from all schools.  

According to Crotty, there are a total of 19 states within the USA that still allows corporal punishment in their schools. This means that over 180,000 students are exposed to corporal punishment yearly within the USA. The most punished students remain those who make up close to 80% of the total number of students physically punished in American schools. These states allow physical discipline measures to be taken on students who may have gone wrong in one way or another during school time Crotty (1). Majority of the states that still allow corporal punishment in their schools have the practice connected to long-standing cultural, religious, and ethnic traditions. As such, it becomes difficult to stop the practice.  While reasonable corporal punishment is allowed at home, the use of corporal punishment in schools has been questioned mainly based on ethical and moral grounds. Recent history has also suggested that corporal punishment exposes children to long-term harms including anxiety and mood disorders which may affect their lives.

Gershoff (4) identified various reasons which warrant corporal punishment in most of these schools. They include general misbehavior from students including student being late to report to class, failing to submit homework on time or failing to do them entirely, not concentrating on classwork, sleeping, engaging in dangerous behavior that exposes them and their peers to danger, disrespecting teachers and other elderly persons among several others. All these misbehaviors may attract the use of corporal punishment in most of the schools within the 19 states that still allow corporal punishment. Most advocates of corporal punishment argue that the use of corporal punishment to correct these misbehaviors goes a long way in ensuring the students who committed them do not repeat them. In states where corporal punishment is banned, most of these crimes always receive alternative punishment.

The United States of America remains the only country in the western world that has held on to the practice of corporal punishment in their schools. Most countries have either avoided this practice or banned it completely in schools. This, therefore, can be termed as a backward practice by the USA as most of its peers adopt modern ways to discipline students that do not include inflicting physical pain on them. The USA Congress has been unable to offer guidance on the matter choosing to ignore various recommendations from the Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union which recommended federal legislation to ban the use of corporal punishment in American schools Gershoff  (39).

Corporal punishment should be banned in schools based on a number of reasons. Kennedy (1) suggests that recent researches on the topic have revealed that corporal punishment is not an effective means to punish children in the classroom. In most cases, students of color, as well as those with disabilities, experience higher cases of corporal punishment than the rest. This, therefore, suggests that this type of punishment is not only bias but also ineffective when it comes to disciplining children. There are also various health problems that come with corporal punishment including depression and low self-esteem.

Many who argue against corporal punishment have pointed out the fact that there is no rationale on the level of corporal punishment to apply to students based on various misbehaviors. It, therefore, becomes difficult to regulate how corporal punishment is meted to students. The mere fact that corporal punishment is not part of the school education curriculum suggests that this activity is not legal. There are several ways which discipline can be taught to students including teaching by example to the students to make them understand the importance of being disciplined Gershoff (40). The use of physical punishment, therefore, should be condemned in the strongest terms from our schools as it exposes children to unnecessary harm which could have been avoided had the teachers adopted non-physical means to discipline the students.

Corporal punishment, however, comes with various alleged benefits which explains why it has continued to be used despite the fact that many are against it. Pro-corporal punishment crusaders believe that there is a reason corporal punishment has been used in schools for years. Religion, as well as culture, has allowed for the use of corporal punishment to discipline children. Religious persons refer to the book of Proverbs 13:24 in the Bible which states: "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Many therefore believe that corporal punishment is necessary in order to discipline children. It is regarded as being an effective means of discipline by the fact that it achieves two goals at the same time Kennedy (1). It acts as a deterrent preventing the student from future misconduct while also offers punishment for the crime committed. As such, it can be relied on to keep students in line as it offers instant justice while also acting as a deterrent for them to avoid such misbehaviors in future.

The problem of lack of regulation has been of most concern to most persons against corporal punishment. Many pro-corporal punishment activists have argued that with proper control measures, the method can prove its effectiveness in ensuring discipline and concentration among students in schools. There is need to introduce a regulatory framework within which corporal punishment can be applied to students when they engage in misconduct Gershoff (15). That way, the problem of excess harm can be avoided by ensuring that students are adequately punished in a way that is relative to the misconduct they committed.