PADDLING IN SCHOOL: CUSTOM UNDER FIRE ANEW

This article was published TWENTY-ONE years ago, but could have been written today...


By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: July 9, 1987

When emergency room physicians at the south Georgia hospital saw the welts and deep purple bruises covering the thighs and buttocks of 12-year-old Brian Miller, they notified county officials about a possible case of child abuse.

But the county social worker who came to the hospital learned that the sixth grader had not been beaten at home. The bruises came from a spanking for misbehaving in gym class he had received earlier that day from a teacher who had used a wooden paddle - a spanking so severe that the social worker told the boy's father, Estell Miller, that if he had beaten his son that way, he could go to jail, according to the family.

The Millers and the American Civil Liberties Union are now in Federal District Court here, plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Board of Education in Toombs County, in rural southeast Georgia. They contend that the punishment their son received last December was excessive, brutal and severe, allegations that school officials deny. Paddling Likened to Child Abuse

The Millers' lawsuit is among the latest and most dramatic in a series of challenges by parents, lawmakers, educators and others to the longstanding authority of public school officials in 41 states to administer corporal punishment, a staple of school discipline that still enjoys popular support among teachers and many parents, especially across the rural South and Midwest.

Although corporal punishment is not used as frequently as it once was, Federal surveys estimate that such punishment is meted out across the country some 3 million times a year, most often against boys in elementary school, by teachers or administrators wielding wooden paddles they employ to whack students across the buttocks.

The Miller lawsuit and others reflects a growing perception among many parents, psychologists and educators that corporal punishment can be a form of child abuse.

Dr. Irwin A. Hyman, a psychologist who directs the National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment at Temple University, estimates that one incident in 20 produces bleeding, severe bruises or other kinds of physical trauma that characterize criminal child abuse. And Dr. Hyman said that studies he had conducted over 10 years suggested that even students who did not show lasting physical damage were often the victims of emotional scars that produced headaches, nightmares and vomiting. Discrimination by Race

The debate also reflects a growing concern among some scholars and educators that poor black, Hispanic and emotionally troubled youngsters are much more likely to be the subjects of corporal punishment than middle class white students.

''Corporal punishment is used most frequently on poor minority students; more specifically, on poor blacks and, most specifically, on poor black males,'' said Joan McCarty First, director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students, a Boston-based organization that analyzed data on corporal punishment gathered by the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

That data, drawn from a survey of 21 percent of the nation's 16,000 school districts, shows that while blacks make up 16 percent of the students in the nation's public schools, they account for 28 percent of all instances of reported corporal punishment.

But many parents, educators and school administrators, some of whom grew up with corporal punishment and point to their own experience as proof that it does no lasting harm, defend the practice. They say it is an essential to maintaining discipline and order in schools. Practice Barred in 9 States

Only nine states - New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii and California - have explicitly barred the use of corporal punishment in their schools, as have a number of large urban school districts in other states, including St. Louis, Atlanta, New Orleans and Minneapolis. Legislation that would abolish such punishment is pending in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Alaska.

''We've been using it here since schools began, and to be honest with you, I don't know what we'd do without it,'' said Johnie Sikes, the superintendent in Toombs County, where school officials say the paddling of Brian Miller fell within school policy governing corporal punishment. ''The only alternative is to send unruly kids home, and they won't learn anything there.''

Although policies differ from school to school, most districts say the punishment is administered only as a last resort to deal with unruly students. Many require parental consent to spank students, and require the paddlings be done by a school administrator in front of a witness.

But corporal punishment has also been used for other purposes: in Fannin County, Ga., parents last year protested the use of spankings on students who did not do their homework. 'The Ugly Secret'

Although the National Education Association passed a resolution at its national convention in Los Angeles last weekend declaring that ''corporal punishment should not be used as a means of disciplining students,'' the organization's state chapters in both Michigan and Ohio have opposed legislation to abolish the practice.

But Lana Pollock, a State Senator in Michigan who has introduced legislation to abolish corporal punishment, says the practice ''is the ugly secret of our public schools.''

''We know all about test scores, but we don't know about the numbers of beatings and striking that take place,'' said Senator Pollock, who said that, on the average, 10 incidents of reported corporal punishment occur across the state each hour of the school day. ''It is a practice that is sick and destructive and counterproductive, in terms of education.''

Many opponents of the practice argue that corporal punishment does not improve educational performance, but rather fuels a cycle of violence among its young victims.

''That's not to say that all incidences of corporal punishment represent actual child abuse,'' said Dr. Hyman of Temple University. ''But each of them contribute to the atmosphere, the acceptance of the idea that violence against children is all right.'' 'Good Children Also Worry'

Marilyn B. Gootman, a professor at the College of Education at the University of Georgia, points to a case in Georgia last year in which a 13-year-old student in Winder who had been paddled only two days before, stabbed his elementary school principal to death.

''Certainly a paddling cannot be equated with a murder, and certainly other factors contributed to the situation,'' said Dr. Gootman. ''But remember, both the paddling and the stabbing are forms of physical violence.''

Dr. Gootman said that paddling has little deterrent effect, because ''the kids who get paddled are the same ones who get paddled over and over again.''

She said that corporal punishment can also harm children whose behavior never leads to paddling.

'' 'Good' '' children also worry about getting paddled,'' Dr. Gootman said in an article that appeared in a newspaper here. ''Their worrying saps energy from their thinking and learning.'' Local Customs and Culture

The United States Supreme Court, ruling in 1977 in a Florida case, upheld the right of school districts to mete out corporal punishment if school officials believe it is necessary to maintain order in schools.

But more recently, a growing number of national groups, including the national parent-teacher association, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, as well as the American Medical Association and the National Association of School Psychologists, have taken stands urging its abolition.

The Western European countries have all banned the practice. Britain, where caning was a fixture of schoolroom life for centuries, became the last to do so last year.

Still, particularly in the more rural, conservative reaches of the South and the Midwest, the practice of corporal punishment is so rooted in the local customs and culture that it is sanctioned by state law.

According to data gathered by the Office of Civil Rights, of the 10 states where corproral punishment is most commonly practiced, nine are in the South, where there remains a strong attachment to the Biblical notion that if you spare the rod, you will spoil the child. Child Abuse Laws Don't Apply



In Mississippi, a state which ranked second to Arkansas in the frequency with which corporal punishment was used, Superintendent Gene Meadows of the Leland schools said: ''This board insists on discipline and insists on children behaving and maintaining passing grades. We want the community to know that the children must first pay attention in order to learn.''

In Georgia, that law even stipulates that teachers who administer it are immune from civil or criminal action if the punishment is given ''in good faith'' and is not ''unduly severe.''

Jewel Norman, an assistant commissioner for public affairs in the state Deartment of Human Resources, says that as a result, the agency believes it has no authority to go into a school system to investigate abuse.

Earlier this year, in the face of growing complaints from parents, the agency asked the state Attorney General for a legal opinion on the matter. The issue is still under study. The situation is similar in most states, where child abuse laws do not apply to the schools, Dr. Hyman said. Legal Challenges Mount

In recent years, a number of court cases filed on behalf of parents and students have sought to redefine and narrow the right of schools to administer corporal punishment. And more and more parents are taking action against school officials as a result of spankings.

A case in New Mexico may be headed for the Supreme Court after the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit overruled a lower court and ruled in favor of a family who argued that the constitutional rights of their 9-year-old daughter were violated as the result of a severe paddling she received at school. A nurse who examined the child said that had the beating happened at home, she would have reported the incident to police as child abuse.

In Charlotte, N.C., a teacher and her aide were charged last week with criminal assault, a misdemeanor, as a result of a spanking of a 6-year-old earlier this year.

And in Moody, Ala., a parent has been charged with second degree assault after she beat a teacher over the head with the same paddle the teacher had used earlier that day to spank her 7-year-old son.