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| My son is a pretty smart guy. He’s a computer engineer pursuing graduate work at an elite university. He was almost paddled as a 3rd grade student in a Michigan public school—which turned out to be one of the events that drew me into this issue. I ended up pulling him out of that school a few months later. The principal seemed bent on singling him out because we didn’t allow him to be paddled. He was the type of kid that greatly enjoyed learning by nature. He was, however, “dead” and unhappy at that “toxic school,” to borrow Jordan Riak’s phrase, that so loved the paddle. Paddling was thus something that indirectly affected his life very much. I am sure it would have affected him much more strongly and harmfully in hidden psychological ways had we allowed the paddling, and perhaps other paddlings afterwards, to occur. | | A couple of years later I read a K-12 “Christian school” pamphlet that quoted a few out of context Old Testament passages. They followed with, as though it was a natural conclusion, “therefore only paddling on the buttocks is approved.” I noticed that the cited verses did not mention paddles, buttocks, or teachers as hitters, but that didn’t seem to affect this school’s “biblical logic.” This was the last straw after a lifetime of seeing spanking abusively used and the Bible vaguely referenced to “back up the abuse.” For the first time I began to question whether the Bible really did teach spanking as done in America today, let alone school paddling. It was the beginning of a religious quest. | | What does the Bible really teach about school paddling, if anything? What motivates people to want to paddle children, and even teens, in schools? Is it simply for “discipline,” to help children become “moral citizens” and to “keep the school running,” as we are told by the paddlers, or are there hidden sexual agendas mixed in for which the outward excuses only provide cover? Are most people who support paddling confused but well meaning or do they really understand the issues and problems? Are the most vocal proponents and practitioners of paddling truly good child care providers, or are they ignorant and reckless with the children in their care but well meaning, or are they violent, sadistic, and sexual child abusers who manipulate ignorant parents and child victims with self-serving “logic?” Is there any way to know the difference by looking at someone? | | Over the years my son watched me study the issue. We discussed it at length. He knew I eventually learned of, and became involved with, some groups working to end school paddling. I had written several 50-page essays from a fundamentalist Christian perspective on the topic, as well as letters to a few paddling Christian school boards, on the fallacy that paddling is a “Christian” doctrine and on its sexual abuse aspects. | | Given that history that my son was a part of it thus came as a surprise when I recently learned that he did not know what school paddling was. He thought he did and so did I. It came out in conversation that he thought that a paddling teacher hit a student’s buttocks with his hand. Of course that may occur in some districts, particularly in the South and in private schools, but overall it is rare and is seen as a murky case of sexual molestation even in many pro-paddling locales. My son had never actually seen a paddle or anyone get paddled. He did not know what a paddle was or what a paddling entailed. | | I thought at the time what a “quiet victory” that ignorance was. The young model for the pictures in this book likewise grew up in Michigan and had no idea what paddling was. I wish that no one in the United States knew what “paddling” was. I wish that paddles were relegated to museums and could be displayed with slave whips and other artifacts of a brutal and ignorant past. I believe some day that will, in fact, be the case. The question is not so much “if,” but “when.” Those of us who are involved in the issue sometimes focus on the millions of cases of paddling that still go on and forget how far out of favor it has become in the vast majority of school districts in the US. Complete ignorance about paddling, when paddling itself is no longer done to children in a local society, is a wonderful thing. | | That same ignorance of what is going on, however, is extremely harmful for parents and voters who live in paddling states. In many extreme ways I believe paddling violates US constitutional and civil laws as well as most school’s internal sexual harassment standards. (There is, by the way, no law whatsoever, despite public belief to the contrary, that prohibits teachers from sexually harassing students. We can only look at violations of Title IX or violations of a school’s voluntary sexual harassment policies in this regard.) The fact that US citizens can be brutally beaten in humiliating and pornographic ways by the state, even as adults, without any due process before or after the fact in “teacher protection act” states, causes paddling to violate the U.S. constitution on many levels. Paddling today seldom recognizes the Supreme Court’s checks and balances. Paddling also certainly violates our growing awareness of sexual harassment awareness issues, such as Title IX statutes. Paddling is an extremely unequal and worse experience for girls generally. No one to my knowledge, however, has yet challenged paddling on any of these grounds. Our legal system, hardly a friend to child victims of rape and similar overt crimes, is openly hostile to victims who have been injured by paddling. |
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