Louisiana lawmakers in the House determined Monday that local schools, not the state, should decide whether to spank or subject students to other forms of physical punishment.
They rejected Monday 34-61 House Bill 497 by Rep. Barbara Norton, D-Shreveport, which would have prohibited corporal punishment in public elementary and secondary schools.
Currently, state law allows individual school boards to make the corporal punishment decision for their schools.
HB497 would have required parent orientations, which school boards are already required to conduct, to include policies on prohibiting corporal punishment.
“The school system is not for raising our children,” she said. “The school system is for teaching.”
She said many other states have found other “solutions” to make sure children do not “act up” in class, and alternative lessons will affect children well into their adult years. She said corporal punishment is unfair to the students and the parents.
Rep. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, noted research shows corporal punishment does not teach the intended lesson for children. “We are teaching them to be violent.”
Rep. Rogers Pope, R-Denham Springs, argued that schools should have a choice, and 31 out of 38 state school systems already have chosen not to engage in such punishments.
“If 31 other states say no, tell me why we can’t say no,” Norton said.
Norton urged Pope to show her what information he possesses shows that “paddling a child every year” teaches them to become anything but violent.
“You can take numbers and figures and make them, pretty much, what you want them to be,” Pope responded.
Pope suggested a middle-ground, such as restricting schools by what kind of ways they can conduct corporal punishment instead of eliminating.
