Discipline:State Laws On Corporal Punishment In Public Schools - Research Paper Example

Discipline: Laws on Corporal Punishment in Public Schools Discipline: Laws on Corporal Punishment in Public SchoolsProblem StatementEvery U.S state has the authority to place a ban on corporal punishment in both public and private schools. Presently, corporal punishment is banned in public schools in about 31 U.S states inclusive of the District of Columbia. In Iowa and New Jersey corporal punishment is illegal in both public and private schools (Alexander & Alexander, 2012). Most of the Southern states are among the 19 states that have not yet banned it.

The first U.S state to place a ban on corporal punishment was New Jersey way back in 1867 which was preceded by Massachusetts in 1971. The latest state to follow suit is New Mexico in 2011. Private schools in many states are exempted from the bans and thus may opt to make use of the paddle. Statistics indicate that Hispanic and the black students are more probable to be paddled as opposed to the white students probably due to the reluctance of the minority race to consent to it (Claus-Ehlers, 2008).

A research in Kentucky has established that some of the minority students were inexplicably besieged by the policies of discipline in general on top of the corporal punishment. This research will be based on some selected secondary data such as federal statistics which show that about 80% of school paddling in the United States is mostly of boys. This is so due to the reason that boys are more thought more frequently compared to girls who show the type of misconduct that corporal punishment is taken to be more appropriate (Gardner & Anderson, 2012).

Purpose Statement Corporal punishment has been common in schools in most parts of the world but in the recent times it has been illegalized in most parts of Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and Europe. In particular, specific focus is shifted towards the U.S Supreme Court Ruling in Ingraham v. Wright (1977), which ruled that corporal punishment in schools does not in any way infringe the cruel and abnormal punishment clause of the state constitution since the clause only makes for the prison system.

This research applies to the most states especially the 19 states that are yet to ban corporal punishment. Focus is drawn towards the illegalization of corporal punishment in both public and private schools given the rising global concerns over human rights abuses (Farmer, Human Rights Watch & American Civil Liberties Union, 2009). The Supreme Court of the United States is yet to judge the conduct using the federal law and constitution or the rest of the states clauses. In most of the Southern states, paddling has been in existence even though a strong decline has been observed in its incidence in the last two decades (Walsh, Kemerer & Maniotis, 2010).

The research will further draw its content from most of the traditional culture that revolve around the corporal punishment in all schools. This study will be more unique from other researches on the same topic given its focus will be drawn from the latest statistics in regard to the cases of corporal punishment and the efforts being done to either ban or support corporal punishment in most schools.ReferencesAlexander, K., & Alexander, M. D. (2012). American public school law. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Claus-Ehlers, C. S. (2008). Encyclopedia of cross-cultural school psychology. New York: Springer. Farmer, A., Human Rights Watch (Organization), & American Civil Liberties Union. (2009). Impairing education: Corporal punishment of students with disabilities in US public schools. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch.Gardner, T. J., & Anderson, T. M. (2012). Criminal law. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.Walsh, J., Kemerer, F. R., & Maniotis, L. (2010). The educators guide to Texas school law.

Austin: University of Texas Press.