A town will reintroduce corporal punishment in its schools following discussions between teachers, parents and officials on how to improve discipline.
Punishing students physically was stopped in the district of Cassville, Missouri in 2001.
However, misbehaving students face being struck with a wooden paddle under new proposals, which will also see mobile phones banned from classrooms and an academy created for pupils who fail to thrive in a traditional classroom setting.
Missouri is one of 19 states in the US where corporal punishment is still legal.
Only “certified personnel” would be allowed to carry out corporal punishments – which would be reserved for when “alternative means of discipline have failed” - and they would be administered in front of a district employee who would act as a witness.
Children would not be struck in front of other students, with younger students being hit on the buttocks once or twice, with up to three blows for older students.
The Times reported a memo circulated among parents which said: “It shall be administered so that there can be no chance of bodily injury or harm. Striking a student on the head or face is not permitted.”
Cassville school district superintendent Merlyn Johnson told the Springfield Newsleader: “Parents have said ‘why can’t you paddle my student?’
“There had been requests from parents for us to look into it.”
The US Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that corporal punishment was constitutional after a case was brought on behalf of 14-year-old James Ingraham.
Ingraham, a student in Florida, was paddled more than 20 times by his school principal while being restrained by the assistant principal, leaving him needing medical treatment, and a claim was filed that this amounted to a “cruel and unusual punishment”.
However, the court decided that corporal punishment was not a violation of the eighth amendment because cruel and unusual punishments referred to convicted criminals rather than schoolchildren.
That ruling meant that individual states could make their own decisions on corporal punishment and, according to figures from the National Center for Education Statistics, 70,348 students were subjected to it in 2018 across 19 states.
The practice is opposed by many, including the American Psychological Association, which argues that is can cause children to become more aggressive and disruptive.
Research in Pennsylvania and Texas in 2016 found that corporal punishment was 50 per cent more likely to be used on African-American children and students with disabilities.
“Dozens of research studies have confirmed that corporal punishment does not promote better behaviour in children,” Elizabeth Gershoff of the University of Texas, one of the authors, said at the time.
Corporal punishment has been banned in schools in the UK since 1986.
