Yet, almost a half million children are being hit yearly in public schools with a disproportionate number being minority children and children with disabilities. Corporal punishment is any intervention which is designed to or likely to cause physical pain in order to stop or change behavior. In the United States, the most typical form of school corporal punishment is the striking of a student s buttocks with a wooden paddle by a school authority because the authority believes the student has disobeyed a rule. Discipline is important and schools have a strong role in teaching children to be self- disciplined. Self-discipline is the ability to understand a situation, to make appropriate decisions about ones behavior in that situation and to ordinarily perform the appropriate behavior when unsupervised by adults.
Effective discipline is primarily a matter of instruction rather than punishment.
Many means of effective and safe discipline are available. Punishment contingencies in general tend to have negative side effects including leading students to be sneaky and to lie about their behavior in order to escape punishment. Corporal punishment is a technique that can easily be abused leading to physical injuries. Evidence indicates that corporal punishment negatively effects the social, psychological and educational development of students and contributes to the cycle of child abuse and pro-violence attitudes of youth. NASP reaffirms its opposition to the use of corporal punishment in schools and will actively support removal of legal sanctions for its use.