Former Rare Staff
The Three Rivers Independent School board of trustees is giving a new — yet old — meaning to “board of education” by deciding to bring back corporal punishment in the form of paddling for misbehaving students but only if parents opt into the practice for their kids.
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According to KHOU, the decision was made Tuesday to allow “deliberate infliction of physical pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping or any other physical force used as a means of discipline.”
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The Corpus Christi Caller-Times added that parents will be able to opt in or out of the practice verbally or in writing and that students allowed to be punished corporally “will receive one paddling for his or her infraction when they misbehave at school.”
Paddling will occur when the eligible child disobeys an educator or class rules.
“If the parent is not comfortable with it, that’s the end of the discussion,” district’s superintendent Mary Springs told the Caller-Times. “We will look at how many discipline referrals were made compared to last year and how many times [corporal punishment] was administered. If it reduces the number of discipline referrals, then that is a good thing.”
Three Rivers Elementary School’s campus behavior coordinator Andrew Amaro was the one who came up with the idea and said that he believed such punishment worked for him when he was in school.
“I believe it worked. It was an immediate response for me. I knew that if I got in trouble with a teacher and I was disrespectful, whatever the infraction was, I knew I was going to get a swat by the principal,” he said.
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The paddling policy is supposed to go into effect at the beginning of the school year. It is the source of hot debate on the internet, as some say it will emotionally damage kids and make problems worse, while others recall times such spankings changed them for the better.
What do you think?
(Photo source: Flickr Creative Commons/Wesley Fryer)
