“You just had to take it”: Students on Corporal Punishment in School

• In Event: 30865 - Centering Child and Youth Perspectives: Young people as social thinkers and actors

Abstract

Corporal punishment remains legal in United States public schools in 17 states and private schools in 46 states. Prior research has highlighted harms of corporal punishment on children, such as poorer mental health and higher risk of physical injury and abuse, while also documenting gendered, racialized, and disability-related disparities in likelihood of receiving punishment. However, surprisingly little qualitative work has focused on the present-day practice of school-based corporal punishment in the United States and the perspectives of students who are currently subjected to it. Drawing on over a year of in-depth ethnography at Abundance Junior High School, a predominantly Black public school in the rural Louisiana Delta, I describe the physical and emotional harms of corporal punishment, 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