Two extracts from TV coverage of US school corporal punishment in 1978.

CLIP 1 OF 2: 'Fly-on-the-wall' TV documentary reports from a paddling school in Pennsylvania

This is a four-minute clip of edited highlights from 'The Rod of Correction', a 26-minute NBC News Weekend documentary sequence broadcast in 1978. The TV crew visited a high school in Butler, Pennsylvania, a small industrial town, where assistant principal Ken Musko was running a special and strict 'last chance' or 'alternative education' program for behavioral backsliders, apparently all boys, with written permission from their parents. This explicitly involved regular paddlings, which the TV team from New York (Producer: Craig Leake) seemed to think an astonishing state of affairs (in 1978!), showing yet again how ill-informed the metropolitan media so often are about what actually happens in Hicksville USA. In reality, of course, school CP was a daily routine in very many US schools in that era.

What we have here is a very rare example of real-life school paddlings being shown on TV. Unfortunately the film was edited in a rather coy way, so that we see the 'before and after' as students go in and out of the office but never actually see the students bending over or the paddle landing, but we do hear the whacks on the soundtrack, together with the accompanying dialogue and the gasps of pain. At one point we do get a brief glimpse of the paddle. There is no doubt that these paddlings are genuine.

The paddlings take place in the principal's office, with the principal witnessing while Musko does the spanking. All the punishments we hear are of only one or two strokes (which seems mild -- would there have been more if the cameras were not present?), and the modus operandi is 'hands on the desk'. There was a mass paddling 'two or three times a week', with half a dozen or so miscreants all waiting their turn in an outer office and then leaving as a group once all the spankings were completed. In this outer office, secretaries are seen and heard nonchalantly typing away as the chastisements audibly proceed.

Musko interlaces his approach with a refrain of Christianity, complete with biblical quotations about 'the rod of correction', which I do not think would be permitted in a public school nowadays. (Where are they now? side note: Having retired from schoolteaching he is now, 35+ years on, preaching a 'healing ministry' and doing religious radio shows.)

Interesting scenes caught on the film include one boy who stands in the corridor clutching and rubbing his buttocks a few moments after emerging from the office, and a glimpse through the office window of an older student removing his coat and emptying his back pockets just before bending over. Also, when Musko is interrogating a boy who denies smoking, other students are heard saying 'Come on admit it, Paul, it's only worth one whack'.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

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CLIP 2 OF 2: News report on a contested school paddling in Oklahoma

This 4-minute news item entitled 'Oologah Kids Get Swats For Mimicking KISS' was broadcast by KOTV6 in Tulsa (15 June 1978). Rex Daugherty reports from the small town of Oologah in north-west Oklahoma. After firecrackers were let off on the school stage during a talent contest, four high-school boys were paddled (four whacks each) by the music teacher. One of the boys, Vance Derrickson (sp), a high-school sophomore, is interviewed, as also one of their mothers, and the music teacher, who defends her actions. The school superintendent declined to speak to the reporter. The boy claims the teachers knew about the planned act and did not object at the time. The mothers asked the school board for an apology for the 'unjust whipping' but none was forthcoming.

The student, aged about 16, says he and his collaborators were punished for no reason. Note that at no point does anyone object to corporal punishment on principle, indeed it is implicit in the boy's remarks that he accepts a four-swat paddling as a disciplinary norm. He just didn't think this particular punishment was fair.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

IMPORTANT: Copyright in this video material rests with the original copyright holders. This brief excerpt is reproduced under the 'fair use' doctrine for private, non-profit, historical research and education purposes only. It must not be redistributed or republished in any commercial context.