Georgia charter school uses paddle to punish students

Last week, the Georgian School of Innovation and Classics sent students home with a form that bothered some. The Christian school from kindergarten to ninth grade asked parents to give the school permission to paddle with misbehaved kids.

"At this school, we take discipline very seriously," said Superintendent Jody Boulineau in Augusta, WRDW of Georgia. The school has not responded to requests today for an interview or statement.

She stated that 100 parents had returned the form and that about one third of them had given permission to paddle. According to the WRDW, the form reads as follows: "A student will be taken to an office in camera. The student will put his hands on his knees or his furniture and will be hit on the buttocks with a paddle.

The penalty will not exceed three swats coming from a paddle, which measures 24 inches in length, thick in inch in thickness and six inches in width. If the parents do not want their children to paddle, the child will be suspended for five days.

"What bothers me about it is that they really have unmotivated parents," said Dr. Deborah Gilboa, an expert in parenting education. "Allows us to paddle to your child … or your child will miss a week of school and you will miss a week of work."

This makes it difficult for parents to reject corporal punishment, which the research found simply does not work, she said. Several organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), do not support its use. The AAP position paper, in part, says:

"Corporal punishment can undermine the student's self-image and academic success and contribute to the disruptive and violent behavior of students. Alternative methods of behavioral management have proved more effective than corporal punishment.

After being paddled or spanked, students often stop acting badly for a few days because they are scared. But that does not help them understand how to behave.

"The child is humiliated and angry and the bad behavior can escalate," said Dr. Robert Sege, AAP spokesperson and head of the Child Protection Program at the Floating Hospital. for children from Boston. "Bodily punishments are humiliating and designed to be humiliating and do not allow a child to develop his or her own sense of right and wrong and how to behave.

In addition, corporal punishment often teaches children that aggression solves problems.

"The physical punishments inflicted on children do not affect their behavior. This tends to make them more fearful of adults in their lives and more aggressive towards each other while they see violence as a way to cope, "said Gilboa.

Although the use of corporal punishment has decreased nationally, 20 states still allow it. Sege said that when the AAP first released its statement in 2000, schools used corporal punishment nearly two million times a year. In 2014-2015, this number dropped to 160,000 times.

But Boulineau told WRDW that she had only heard positive responses.

"I've heard" Super, it's time ", we're delighted that this is happening again, they should never have been out of school," she said.

Sege believes that proponents of corporal punishment overestimate his popularity and said investigations show that most American parents are not supportive of the practice. And research proves that other forms of punishment are more effective at turning bad habits into good ones.

"There are better behavior management methods that do not compromise student success in school," he said.