Paddle (spanking)

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For other uses, see paddle (disambiguation)

A spanking paddle is a wooden instrument with a long, flat face and narrow neck, existing in various sizes and dimensions, used to administer corporal punishment to the buttocks, especially in North America. It is rarely found in the rest of the English-speaking world, where the same purpose is typically served by a rattan cane.

Contents 1 Types and terms 2 Scope of use 2.1 Paddling as punishment in U.S. schools 2.2 Judicial punishment 2.3 Social discipline 2.4 Other play and traditions 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Types and terms

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The word is also used as a verb (to paddle), so that a punishment administered with the paddle is called a paddling.

A spanking paddle can sometimes be called a shingle.

Confusingly, non-wooden flat devices, such as thick leather straps, are sometimes called paddles, as with the pre-1972 Canadian prison strap.

• Various terms exist for a paddling, such as giving wood, the woodshed treatment [from the rural tradition that such punishments were administered in such an annex], a (hide-)tanning, medicine, therapy, etc., and even incorrect terms that strictly speaking refer to a different implement of punishment, such as a whipping; it is also possible to specify the anatomical target, e.g. ass-whupping or arse-whipping. At St. Augustine High School (New Orleans), receiving a paddling is known as "getting the board". The head of a boys' reformatory has described paddling an inmate as "boarding his butt". In most ordinary schools, however, strokes of the paddle are known as "licks" or "swats" or "pops", and being paddled is typically described as "getting licks" or "getting swats".

• In some countries such as the United States, Canada and the Philippines, paddling is used in college fraternities and sororities as a form of hazing, though nowadays it is likely to be merely a symbolic, decorative gift to a "little brother/little sister" from his or her mentor, rather than used for serious punishment.

• Paddles are often made from (expensive but durable) hardwood, such as maple, oak, mahogany or walnut, and finished with varnish or teak oil; plastic causes less pain due to lower density, though some modern paddles are made of Lexan. Fiberglass is regarded as being too likely to break.

• Paddles may be home-made or home-modified objects, e.g. a shortened canoe paddle or baseball bat with one side flatted to half or less, as once used on cadets in Columbia Military Academy; especially in domestic discipline, various substitutes might be used, including the kitchen utensil cutting board (wooden and paddle-shaped) or the table tennis bat. In secondary schools, punishment paddles are traditionally manufactured as an exercise in shop class and then given to a favorite teacher.

• As a paddle is flat and inflexible, unlike a cane or whip, it is too blunt to cause stripes or weals, but it can cause bruising.

• Generally the physical impact is therefore not greatly increased, only the embarrassment, if administered "pants down", except in the case of the holed paddle (the original, oblong model was known as a Spencer paddle), which causes the recipient to blister much faster (these holes may be beveled to reduce the chances of blistering).

• Furthermore a long model (including the handle) increases the leverage and hence the force applied. While a wide blade may look frightening, it spreads the force over a larger surface, and so with equal weight it would hit less intensely. A narrower shape will concentrate all the force of the blows on a smaller area, causing more intense pain and worse bruising.

• As there is quite a market for paddles in the United States, there are companies which manufacture and market them, often in combination with other items (disciplinarian or not), for fraternity/sorority, home, school and "fun" use, but most of the names these use are rather arbitrary. There are also novelty shops that sell paddles (small and large); these are often decorated with humorous motifs and instructions such as "Applying the Board of Education to the Seat of Learning," "Heat for the Seat," "How to Paddle Your Wife" and "Frontier Tail-blazer."

• Somewhat similar, though usually not called a paddle, can be the wooden 'sword' (often bamboo and usually flattened; otherwise it is rather a cane) used for corporal discipline, mainly on the buttocks, but also sometimes on the hands, in the Far East, such as the shinai or kendo sword normally used for martial arts, once (or possibly still) used in some private 'after hours' Japanese schools.^[1] A similar implement is routinely used today for school corporal punishment in South Korea.

• Hitting children at all in any manner, or hitting them with objects is expressly illegal or a criminal offence in some countries.^[2]

[edit] Scope of use

Paddling is mainly used in the (mainly Southern and rural) United States as a means to discipline misbehaving school students. It might also still be found and used in some homes to punish children.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Paddling as punishment in U.S. schools

The paddle is the almost invariable implement in US schools that still allow corporal punishment for student misconduct. Typically, with two or more administrators present, the student is told to bend over a desk or chair and receives the prescribed number of strokes of the paddle, normally in an office, but sometimes in a hallway. In the vast majority of cases the punishment is delivered across the lower seat of the student's normal trousers or jeans; it would be unthinkable nowadays, in ordinary schools, for the student to be required to lower these, though that might have happened in some places in the past, especially by sports coaches. However, "pants-down" paddling used to be common some strict military boarding schools, and remains a possibility in a very few, such as Chamberlain-Hunt Academy in Mississippi.

In the majority of U.S. schools, paddling is more strictly regulated than in the past, some schools publishing detailed rules in their student handbooks.^[3] Generally, a maximum of three to five swats (or "licks" or "pops") are given. Practice has gradually moved from paddlings that other students might witness accidentally or intentionally to paddlings administered out of the sight of other students, typically in the principal's office. Most "hallway" paddlings were the ones that could be viewed by other students, administrators or outsiders visiting the school.

Most urban public school systems in the United States have banned all forms of corporal punishment. Statistics collected by the federal government show that the use of the paddle has been declining consistently, in all states where it is used, over at least the past 20 years. Some private schools, again largely in the South, also still use corporal punishment, especially Christian schools, "historically black" schools and military-style boarding schools.

As of August 2008, 21 states allow corporal punishment in schools.^[4] Approximately 350,000 cases of physical punishment are reported in schools each year.^[5] Statistics show that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be paddled than white students, possibly because minority-race parents are more inclined to approve of it.^[6] Male students receive about 75 to 85% of all corporal punishment, probably because male students commit more offenses (they also tend to receive the majority proportion of other kinds of punishments, so it is not necessarily a case of gender discrimination in the treatment of equivalent misbehavior).^[7]

[edit] Judicial punishment

The wooden paddle has not featured in official judicial or prison punishments in the western world, but something like it is shown in use in a photograph from China circa 1900.^[8] In the same era, a similar process was employed in Korea. In both cases the punishment was delivered to the offender's bare buttocks.

[edit] Social discipline

• Some university or college traditions enforce(d) rules by paddling offenders. In the University of Missouri until World War II,^[9] any freshman found on the 'quad', the most prestigious square on campus, had to offer his 'insolent' posterior for punishment along a paddle line formed by swatting seniors.
• Fraternities and sororities are commonly associated with paddling of members, especially new members or pledges. Due to modern hazing laws and anti-hazing regulations by Greek organizations, this has declined. This entire subculture is peculiar to North America, and unknown in the British world.

[edit] Other play and traditions

The paddle is also a favorite implement for non-disciplinary "fun" spankings, as also for paddle games (such as trading blows) or a paddle machine or spanking pyramid.

[edit] See also

• Spanking
• Corporal punishment
• Erotic spanking
• Caning

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Corporal punishment in US schools" at World CP Research
• Agony&Ecstasy
• Wood spanking paddles