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| Scott told me that female students were not subjected to corporal punishment when he was in school. He graduated in the 80s, and, to his knowledge, it is only recently that girls began to be paddled. He seemed conflicted on this to me, saying that if he had a daughter he would not want her paddled but would want that “option” for his son. He can see, however, that is not “fair” either. The girls are then forced into long suspensions for trivial “day to day offenses” that harm grades, college chances, and sports more than boys. | | Scott knew a man who had just retired from 30 years of teaching and coaching at a paddling high school. The teacher said he had never himself paddled in all of those years, and said it was female students suing for the “right to be paddled” that made his school “start paddling girls too” a few years ago. | | Right away, before we even begin to examine the support for paddling there, we notice that “paddling” is “not as in the good old days” for Scott and this retired coach. Unknown perhaps to may voters, preachers, parents, and politicians, paddling in his Dallas area school now has a greater sexual abuse dimension. Before they only paddled males, and now they supposedly “equally paddle females.” Sometimes, when you take something old and try to “modernize” it, you end up with a monstrosity worse than the old or the new. The “modernizing” just doesn’t fit. | | The wisdom of many “old timers” was that the sexual violation of girls was obvious with paddling. It was not something that they would consider. No matter how brutish they were, how violent with the boys, how backward in whatever other ways, or how intelligent, or how noble, or whatever mix of characteristics they had, the paddlers of the past, from Scott’s experience and that of many other people, with whatever sexists notions they had, often did nevertheless recognize that it was especially wrong in many ways for men to paddle girls. | | Scott noted that apparently female students were, again unlike the “good old days,” suddenly getting a tremendous amount of “in school suspensions,” or “ISS,” and they wanted “the option” of getting paddled, “just like the male students.” Of course as we are seeing here it never is “just like the male students” and never can be, but therein lies the key to how this unbelievable abuse is heaped upon women in an age otherwise becoming more aware of sexual abuse and harassment in every other context. | | This “dilemma” does not exist in non-paddling states. No students are “asking to be paddled.” and neither are students losing their GPAs over trivial offenses. The “In School Suspension,” which harms a student’s class work, GPA, college chances, and sports, is in effect “quid-pro-quo sexual harassment” when coupled with paddling as “the only alternate.” The paddling “choice” is very sexually abusive, but does not harm schooling and sports like ISS does. Some women have also reported that if they “chose” to let the man paddle them it would be “off the record,” but if they took an ISS it would be on their permanent school record. What the principals want to do is very clear from the way their “options” almost universally railroad students to “ask” for a very brutal and degrading paddling instead. | | Like most folks who grow up in paddling areas it never seems to have occurred to Scott, or to this retired coach, that maybe the long suspensions and paddling are both harmful and too severe for the small offenses they are exclusively used for. Most schools in non-paddling states do not use ISS for trivial class one or two offenses. ISS was originally designed to replace suspensions, which were only used for the most serious cases like selling drugs or bringing a gun to school—class four or class five offenses. No school used ordinary suspensions for tardiness, dress codes, smoking, skipping a day, or for parking violations—but the ISS somehow seemed “tamer,” or easier to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, than “out of school suspension” since the students were still technically “in school.” In high paddling areas ISS became the “tool of choice” for the most trivial offenses—with the very obvious motivation that it can be used to coerce teen students to “bend over for the paddle” for those same, trivial, day-to-day problems. |
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