Corporal punishment is defined as a form of physical punishment for the purpose of

disciplining or reforming a wrong doer, or as a means of discouraging unacceptable

behavior while encouraging acceptable behavior. Too often Corporal punishment is defined
as beating a child, or abusing them. That is not what corporal punishment is, it is not
senselessly hitting a child for acting out, it is a controlled punishment designed to teach
them the difference between good and bad and what they should and should not do.
Corporal punishment teaches children who are disrespectful, undisciplined, and disregard
the rules that there are legitimate repercussions to their actions. Corporal Punishment in
schools is very controlled, parents sign permission slips to allow their student to be
punished if they break the rules, specific offenses that will lead to punishment are laid out
clearly by the schools, offenses such as fighting have more sever consequences than
chewing gum or being tardy, the number of paddlings that the student receives is directly
related to the offense. Reverand Deryle Adkinson is a designated discipliner at Plank
Christian academy, He reveals that when paddling he never hits the students more than
three times, and that Paddling is done carefully and never in anger as to not permanently
harm the child but to still teach them their lesson.
Corporal Punishment teaches children valuable lessons that will stick with them
throughout their childhood.
People are for corporal punishment, in Scripps Howard News Poll 51% of people
favored corporal punishment. In another poll conducted with teachers it was found that 75%
of teachers said that they would prefer to retain corporal punishment as One arrow in the
quiver available to them The teachers believe that if a small percentage of students
misbehavior is corrected through corporal punishment, it has a corrective effect on the
much larger percentage of students who are not misbehaving.
At Saint Augustine high school, an all-African-American Catholic High School
located in Louisiana, corporal punishment was a staple of school and because of it Saint
Augustines prided itself on its students discipline. In 2011 the Catholic School Board
suspended corporal punishment because they were receiving complaints from people who
did not go to the school. They suspended the program only to receive extreme backlash
from the parents, faculty, alumni, and even students, all of whom supported and believed in
corporal punishment, according to the school principle there was overwhelming support
from the community. The school was forced to resort to a zero-tolerance policy for
misbehavior. In an interview conducted with the Saint Augustine Herald, Principle Don
Burcree said that the discipline at the school has suffered since the school stopped
paddling, he explains that, what has happened is that infractions that would have stopped
by now have continued to rise, causing the severity of the penalties to increase. More than
500 students and parents participated in a march to support the use of corporal punishment.
In the same interview the student body president of Saint Augustines spoke on behalf of
the students saying that, the arch bishop was trying to fix something that was not broken.
What worried principle was not as much about the use of the paddle but with the rights of
the African-American parents to educate and discipline their own children in their traditions.