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| Let’s pretend for a moment that paddling did some good. We can play “the devil’s advocate” and suppose that there was at least some “short term gain” from paddling that mysteriously gets completely erased over time. | | You can pay teachers less perhaps, because you allow them the “fun” of sexually abusing your children with sadistic assaults on their buttocks. Perhaps that is a “benefit.” Believe it or not some state legislators actually know paddling harms children, but want to keep it on the books because it gives “flexibility” for the most abusive and backward schools to hire teachers below normal rates of pay. “Paddling is fun,” brings in hidden porno profits from hidden cameras, which perhaps even some legislators enjoy, and doesn’t cost the state anything up front. “Most kids,” they assume, are not harmed in any “broken bones” way that can be easily identified, even if they suffer a lifetime of hidden psychological and sexual trauma. If we take that “reason” to its logical conclusion, then maybe if we allowed the teachers to sodomize the kids after they spank them we could fill the school with men who would “teach for free?” I bet, in fact, that we could fill the school with men who would even pay us to let them teach and “discipline” our kids with spanking and sodomy. | | The ultimate question is, are we in education for some short term benefit that gets completely lost over time, if it exists at all, or are we in the school business for the long term educational and social gains that produce the healthiest and best educated citizens? If paddling were thought to bring a rise in some test score that is “here today and gone tomorrow” would it, even then, be worth inflicting a lifetime of psychological harm upon a large percentage of students? | | Paddling does seem “quick and easy” and, in the very short run, might seem to produce some desired results. The harm, however, hidden though it may be, is life long and very damaging. (We’ll consider the harms to the victims and perpetrators more deeply in chapters 12 and 13). In fact many young women we interviewed, who chose the “quick and easy” paddling, sadly found out years later that it wasn’t a “quick and easy” discipline after all. They broke down when they tried to describe what happened to Cathy and I. The parallel to “sodomy discipline” is actually more real than it first may seem. The women we interviewed were terrified that someone could read an anonymous, detailed account in this book of their past paddling and figure out, from clues here and there, what their identity was. Does that sound like the result of “healthy school discipline,” or more like sexual abuse? I had to go through great pains to mix up their interviews and anonymize them while still bringing the essential elements out for readers to consider. The “quick and easy” paddling indeed harmed them deeply for life—but most of them didn’t realize how deeply they were affected when the interviews began. I doubt most of them do to this day. Some of them may begin to get a handle on it by middle age, but that will be too late for many after suffering a lifetime of risky and addictive behaviors that were a subconscious way of trying to sort out the abuse. | | The answer to our query is obvious. We are in education for the long term. We do care very much if our educational process causes long-term marriage and sexual problems for many students, adult hitters, and witnesses. We do care if our educational practices lend themselves to teaching child abuse that will be passed on at home and to future generations. We do care if hiring in as a paddling principal induces sadism in otherwise healthy people as a job hazard. We do care if what we do looks in every way “like” sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Just perhaps we would be better off reducing our “drug war” prison spending, and instead spend a bit more on hiring quality teachers who actually care about kids and who want to teach rather than hiring sadistic child abusers who willingly work for less pay as long as they "get to paddle." | | Paddle supporters sometimes recognize the harms from paddling and see the fact that the non-violent states do as well or better in every way. They sometimes know that paddling is “not necessary.” Many nonetheless still support paddling because they see it as “cheap, quick, and easy” to administer. Paddling can, in fact, be a great deal of “fun” to administer, and perhaps also “fun” to view hidden camera videos of later for selected insiders. If you create suspensions and sports losses severe enough, attractive adolescents and young adults even “choose” to be paddled. “Where’s the harm?” they ask. | | A friend who was working to end paddling was told point blank by a state politician that he wanted to keep the “paddle option open” because it was a negotiating tool with teacher’s unions. Many teachers “liked paddling,” and school boards could offer teachers less money if they let them beat the buttocks of adolescent students. I don’t think we would tolerate allowing staff to hit nursing home residents as a negotiating tool to get them to work for lower pay, but we do that very thing with child care in this country. Perhaps it is not an accident that the highest paddling states tend to have the lowest teacher pay, and that the most abusive paddling private schools often have lower pay yet. |
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