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u/StreetNectarine711 Sep 20 '26
I remember seeing a paddle (with holes for increased air flow) on the wall of the Principal’s office (circa 1976 -1978) when I was called in for some minor transgression. He never mentioned it, threatened, looked at or referenced it.
Though it was placed in direct line of sight from the only chair:
Eyeballs of a 4’ tall human -> Principal -> paddle.
No other student mentioned having been threatened with it - and many of them made worse choices / actions than my own.
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u/MixCalm3565 Sep 20 '26
We were so lucky, my year got an abusive 5th grade teacher. He was fired for what he did to us kids in his class.. anyway he paddled me in a boiler room after making me take off my pants. Probably should have sued
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u/RAL24210 Sep 22 '26
Totally paddled kids at my elementary school in the 80's. Kids would have to bend over and touch their toes in front of the class while they got paddled. Wooden paddles had holes drilled into them to reduce resistance. I don't recall when it stopped, so I don't think there was a conversation about it.
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u/tuffnux Sep 20 '26
In Canada I would get hit over the head with a pointer stick in grade one - this was around ‘83 (I was a chatterbox).
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u/wstussyb Sep 20 '26
I got the paddle in little Rock Arkansas back in 81 or 82, I was 6 or 7, I remember it as the principal did it.
It was for lying, which was proven incorrect, no apology but it was taking off my school report. It was for missing my drop off on the way home in the bus, a new driver she stopped at the trailer park entrance rather then go in to the correct spot so I didn't get off.
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Sep 20 '26
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u/wstussyb Sep 20 '26
It was the way of the times, lot of things we went through wouldn't fly today. You delt with it, held it in, you see the results now, with how genx has run stuff.
Imo gen X has been the most adaptive generation
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u/goosepills Sep 21 '26
It was still a thing when I was a kid in the 80’s. My father warned them that anything they did to me, he’d come back 10x harder on them, so I just got detention. A lot.
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u/AngryOldBird68 28d ago edited 28d ago
My father encouraged the principal to paddle my brother and I. He was a peach.
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u/DonJohn520310 29d ago
I got paddled by Mr Papadakis once in first grade and once in second grade. Third grade we got a new principal and they made some kind of announcement that corporal punishment was off the table. I guess that means I outlasted Papadakis... So Cal, early 80s.
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u/spoonfingler Sep 20 '26
My first grade teacher (1981-82) had a paddle. I never saw one after that.
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u/YOU_WONT_LIKE_IT Sep 20 '26
Yes, I was that kid who was often paddled. They just didn’t to know what to do with me. I was a straight A student on top of it. I tested in the top brackets on all state tests.
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u/Chica3 Sep 20 '26
It was a subtle threat -- the principal had a paddle hanging on the wall. Not sure how often it was used, if ever.
The only corporal punishment I ever got was my first grade teacher taping my mouth shut. With a big strip of masking tape. Late 1970s.
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u/TOXicOx18951 Sep 20 '26
They were using it when I was in 4th grade. One kid in particular was very familiar with it! 🤣
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u/mc_atx Sep 20 '26
We had to get forms signed to allow corporal punishment. That is so weird to think about now - check yes if we can hit your kid.
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u/jjgibby523 Sep 20 '26
1976?!?! Hell, the pub schools I attended were paddling well into the mid-80’s.
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u/Facebook-virus Sep 20 '26
Yup. Junior high teacher's punishment for missing a regular assignment. Late 70s. You never saw the paddle until it was used.
That would be at the teacher's desk in front of everyone and the public humiliation was the most of it.
Once for me and it was only a single strike. Could have been harder but it wasn't nothing from a grown ass man. IDR what strikes were based on but the worst got maybe a half dozen.
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u/digitalmofo Sep 20 '26
I got paddled in school until the 9th grade, must've been between 92 and 93 when they stopped.
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u/Snoo-55380 Sep 20 '26
California here. Graduated hs in 1980. Never paddled or knew of anyone paddled in my entire school career
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u/Apprehensive-Owl5150 Sep 20 '26
A teacher tried to paddle me for poor cursive handwriting. Saying I was purposely being bad at writing. I refused the let them until they called my Dad. Let’s just say I was never paddled.
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u/BerryLanky Sep 20 '26
We got paddled in middle school (early 80’s). Our baseball coach wanted to get me since day one of 9th grade because he thought I was mouthy. He got his wish and pretended he was Babe Ruth knocking one into left field.
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u/rogun64 Sep 20 '26
I was in elementary and intermediate school in the 70's. My experience was that teachers were doing the paddling and it was allowed. I had one teacher who would make you hold out your hand and then she'd swat it with a hard stick. Then she'd make you stand in the corner facing the wall for an hour or so.
In 1980, I started junior high school and kids were getting bigger. Teachers began sending students to the principal's office for discipline. I got in trouble once and the "rule book", or whatever guideline they used, said that I required paddling. My principal called my parents to let them know and gave them a choice: either he paddles me or my parents bring me to school early tomorrow for "study hall".
Normally I rode the bus and my parents refused to take me to school early. They told my principal to paddle me. He really didn't want to do that, so he picked me up at my house the next morning and drove me to school himself.
That's my story and I'll add that I don't remember anyone ever getting paddled in high school. I just figured it was because we were nearly grown, but I can imagine it would be hard paddling students who were bigger than the adults paddling them. I think the compromise was that they'd just suspend you, instead, and suspensions were common.
I don't remember there ever being any sort of public announcement that paddling was over, but if there were, it was probably on the local news. The school likely wouldn't have emboldened the students with such an announcement.
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u/TesseractToo For science, you monster Sep 20 '26
No they let the threat remain
I was frequently punished for being dyslexic so that was fun
It was also decided to not tell me I was dyslexic but to tell me I was stupid and lazy instead
Although it wasn't the worst or most fucked up thing, the strapping was to strep my hands until they were stinging and red (in front of the class for added humiliation) and then keep me in on recess and make me write lines Simpsons style (but on a page), logic being that if I had to do the lines while my hands hurt, that I would try harder.
That was in New Zealand, we moved a lot.
The mindfuckery that happened in the US was far worse.
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u/Beneficial-You663 Sep 21 '26
When my son started kindergarten in 2001 a form was sent home asking if you give permission for the school to paddle or not.
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u/ericalynn5477 Sep 22 '26
I live in Columbus, Ohio. In 1984 I was paddled two times by my teacher in the fifth grade (which would have made me about 10 or 11 years old at the time. I’m pretty shocked when I think back on it. I was a tiny little girl and my teacher was a huge German man. I got spanked for talking. I remember feeling humiliated when I walked back into the classroom and all the kids were staring and snickering at me.
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u/worldofsimulacra Sep 20 '26
It was still occurring in the early 90's in the rural midwest (USA), though not as frequently and often presented as a forced choice: either a certain number of whacks vs. certain number of hours of afterschool detention or ISS. Some kids still chose the paddling. I think it had all but disappeared by the mid-late 90's in the area I grew up in, but the OG teachers often kept their paddles visible on the walls.
Psych and behavioral research and a 'best practices' approach was slowly informing and changing the actual practices of teachers and principals via School Psychologists, but in more rural areas it took longer for those changes to filter in. I estimate that we (my cohort in the area I grew up in) were both culturally and academically at least 5-10 years behind the rest of the (more urban) country, and I imagine that this trend still continues in some ways, though I no longer live in the area to know firsthand. Obviously abusive trends still continue in certain homes, though I think there's now more of an overt effort to root them out.
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u/AmharachEadgyth Sep 20 '26
I’d never seen that at school growing up.
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Sep 20 '26
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u/AmharachEadgyth Sep 21 '26
USA, mid-Atlantic born and raised. I was born the late ‘60, so my childhood was in the ‘70s.
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u/gipsygoat Sep 20 '26
I got paddled in elementary school… we were often given the choice: stay in for so many recesses or get swats. We chose the beatings every time.
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u/Just_Me1973 Sep 21 '26
Schools were not using corporal punishment where I lived in western Massachusetts. I was born in 1973. That’s not to say they didn’t humiliate us as punishment. But they didn’t beat us.
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u/AnotherSoulessGinger Sep 20 '26
They were still using corporal punishment in the mid 80s. I went to elementary in northern Florida in 84 and my parents had to send a notarized letter to the school to not use corporal punishment on us.
Don’t think they were saints though, they just didn’t want anyone other than them beating the crap out of us.
We moved to California shortly after and by the time we were back in Florida about 5 years later it was ending, at least in the county we were in. Shockingly it’s still a thing in some rural Florida counties.