Corporal Punishment Still Practiced In Some States

Corporal punishment is practiced in 19 states, mostly in the south, and African American students are more likely to be disciplined with a type of physical punishment than whites, according to recent studies. On average, 160,000 students are disciplined by corporal punishment a year, reported the National Institutes of Health in its study of the prevalence of this form of discipline in 2016. Black children in Mississippi and Alabama are at least 51% more likely to be corporally punished than whites; and in one fifth of the states’ school districts, black children are over 5 times (500%) more likely to be corporally punished, the NIH reported. Corporal punishment is a discipline method in which a supervising adult purposely inflicts pain on a child in response to a child’s misbehavior. In schools where physical punishment is used, common tactics include, paddling, and spanking by hand or wooden stick.