Assembly Panel OKs School Paddling Bill

Eager to turn back the clock on student discipline, Assembly Republicans pushed out of a key committee Wednesday a bill that would allow California schools to reinstitute corporal punishment ranging from standing in front of the blackboard to paddling.

On a straight partisan vote, the Assembly Education Committee approved by a 9-8 margin the measure by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) that would reverse the state’s decade-old ban on corporal punishment of students.

“When corporal punishment was eliminated from our schools, so was control,” Conroy said, adding that his measure will have the effect of “telling California’s youth that they will be held accountable. . . . Right now they know they can get away with just about anything without fear of punishment.”

Conroy’s corporal punishment bill (AB 101) and a companion measure he wrote calling for paddling of juvenile graffiti vandals (AB 7) have been embraced by Republicans in this election year and are among the sharpest indicators of the widening rift between the GOP and Democrats on issues involving the family.

Democrats have staunchly opposed both of Conroy’s bills. They point to studies that indicate that violent and humiliating punishment by adults often backfires, creating more difficulties with problem students, breeding resentment and anger while inciting violent tendencies within a child.

In addition, research has found that minority students and poor white children receive corporal punishment four to five times more frequently than middle- and upper-class white children.

“Children learn violence by being treated violently,” said Assemblywoman Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), the committee chairwoman. “It isn’t the role of government to spank children. That is the obligation and right and decision of families, not of governments.”

The measure was opposed during Wednesday’s hearing by a wide range of educational groups, among them the California PTA, a school nurses association and the California Federation of Teachers.

“There has been 30 years worth of research on corporal punishment in schools, and it all shows it doesn’t work,” said Jeth Gold, a licensed clinical social worker in San Francisco. “All of this research is telling us that violence begets violence.”

But Conroy accused his opponents of engaging in psychobabble and insisted that escalating problems in California schools prove all the studies wrong. He emphasized that his measure would not require districts to practice corporal punishment, but would give them the authority to reinstitute the practice at their discretion.

The bill, which goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee next week, would require school personnel to administer the punishment with another adult present. A parent would be provided a written explanation and a school would have to get written permission from a parent before practicing corporal punishment on a child.

Conroy’s bill would protect the paddler from civil and criminal liability except in the case of excessive force or cruel and unusual punishment, a provision opponents predicted would not stand up in court.

Conroy said he decided to pursue the measure after receiving several letters from teachers, who suggested that corporal punishment was an excellent deterrent to bad behavior.