It’s Supposed to Hurt: Student Experiences of School-Based Corporal Punishment

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: The Impacts of School Discipline Policies on Students' Sense of Belonging and Mattering

Abstract

Corporal punishment remains legal in United States public schools in 17 states and private schools in 46. Research has highlighted harms such as poorer mental health and higher risk of physical injury and abuse, while also documenting gendered, racialized, and disability-related disparities in punishment. However, surprisingly little qualitative work has focused on the present-day practice of school-based corporal punishment in the US and the perspectives of students currently subjected to it. Drawing on over a year of in-depth ethnography at a predominantly Black public school in the rural Louisiana Delta, I describe the physical and emotional harms, how students view and differentiate between school and family-administered corporal punishment, and share students’ vision for alternatives to this ineffective form of punishment.

Author

• Meaghan Mingo, University of Notre Dame