The entire student body of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans attended a rally March 4 to support the return of paddling as a method of discipline at their school.
You read right — these students spent part of their day advocating for the return of corporal punishment, a form of discipline the Catholic school has utilized since its founding in 1951.
Before the start of the 2010-2011 school year, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond banned the practice at St. Augustine, the lone remaining Catholic school in the nation to practice institutional corporal punishment.
By late February, alumni and administrators were calling for the return of the practice, citing discipline concerns they claim have arisen since the beginning of the school year.
The specifics of the practice at St. Augustine were revealed during a vetting process undertaken by Aymond and others in 2010. Students were not only paddled for showing a lack of respect to teachers and administrators or “acting out” in class, but also for poor academic performance.
At the student rally, one senior stood before his fellow students, almost all of whom are African-American, and held a paddle aloft, extolling the virtues of the instrument that was, ironically, created to punish wayward slaves without injuring them severely.
Students chanted “Leave St. Aug alone” loudly during the rally, but student body president Jacob Washington calmly provided perhaps the most revealing sentiment of all.
“We want discipline back, because we know that we’re going to need it in real life,” Washington said.
And therein lies the problem.
Although imparting discipline on high school students is undoubtedly important, the questionable efficacy and morality of hitting them to do so makes the practice of corporal punishment seem draconian at best and damaging at worst.
Worse yet, the school’s student body seems to have internalized the idea that institutionalized violence is a legitimate problem-solving mechanism that has relevance in “real life.”
Unequivocally, the intent of corporal punishment is to cause pain.
Pain is inflicted on students to produce a desired result, whether it is quiet subservience — euphemistically referred to as “respect” — or a higher test score.
The vast majority of peer-reviewed literature has shown that corporal punishment is a generally ineffective form of discipline that may engender more violence.
It is illegal to administer corporal punishment in 29 states, and it is used sparingly in all but a few.
It is estimated that 10 to 12 percent of schools in America use corporal punishment, and the numbers have continued to dwindle as the years pass.
Proponents of St. Augustine’s 60-year-old policy, which is actually enumerated in their student handbook, point to the school’s record of academic success as proof of the policy’s value.
Whether they realize it or not, sentiments like these devalue the contributions and ingenuity of every teacher and student who ever walked through the halls of St. Augustine.
It also perpetuates the subtle but insidious idea that black teenagers require violent discipline to “match up” to their white counterparts academically.
St. Augustine High School was conceived in a progressive spirit. It was founded to provide quality education for black high school students in New Orleans during a time when segregation made such a proposition daunting.
The school has a venerable tradition that should be celebrated, but corporal punishment is an embarrassing vestige of a bygone era that struggles to survive in the modern day.
Aymond is correct in believing corporal punishment has no place in the modern academic environment and should stand firm against those who believe that shaping the lives of young adults necessitates inflicting pain on them when they make mistakes.
Chris Seemann is a 20-year-old mass communication senior from New Orleans.
 
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