Teachers: The Rod Is No Relic

"Spare the rod and spoil the child" may seem like a quaintly old-fashioned philosophy, but plenty of U.S. teachers still live by it. In a nationwide sampling of grade-school teachers by Grade Teacher magazine, nearly half of the 600 respondents said that they had hit at least one child during the last school year; 10% admitted, anonymously, that they had struck children more than five times. In addition, 70% reported that other teachers in their school had used physical punishment.

The survey also disclosed that about 75% of the schools polled still have policies that permit such punishment. Ten percent of the reported cases of pupils being struck occurred despite regulations prohibiting physical punishment. Striking was most common in the public schools, the early primary grades and in the Southern states, and was least frequent in suburban schools. A child is four times more likely to be hit by a male teacher than by a woman. Defending their heavy-handed discipline, 63% of the teachers said that they favored school-board policies permitting them to strike youngsters anywhere except on the head. "Physical punishment," said one teacher from a California ghetto school, "is what these children understand best."