Not enough information, but interesting.

[velvetpage]

I followed a link somewhere and came up with a page about corporal punishment in U.S. schools. It seems 21 states have not yet banned corporal punishment, and of those, about 13 use it on more than 1000 students per year.

While that is nothing short of appalling, I found one image even more interesting. It's the map of which states have banned corporal punishment, which punish fewer than 1000 students per year, and which punish more than 1000 per year. Here's the map.

Now, that map made me sit up and take notice, because it looked an awful lot like a memory I had of maps from a few years ago. So I went looking, and I found:

1) Not a single state that went blue in 2004 allows corporal punishment.
2) The states that have been Republican stronghouses for as long as I've been an adult almost all not only allow it, but have more than 1000 cases of such punishment per year.
3) The states that go back and forth between Republican and Democrat in recent years make up the bulk of the states that allow corporal punishment but practise little of it. There are states in this category that fall into all three categories on the corporal punishment map.

Now I want a study of the possible correlation between the state of the education system and the likelihood of states voting a certain way. This has peaked my curiosity.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

I think you could also do an interesting comparison of corporal punishment by state, versus funding for the DoE per state, versus some sort of achievement per state. My theory is that states with less money available for public schools might not stack up as well, and might have a higher rate of corporal punishment as teachers and administrators attempt to maintain control in the most basic ways.

I do feel - as a proud graduate of the Georgia public school system - that the states which rely upon corporal punisment tend to rely on really rote instruction. This reflects a general social attitude which includes politics; it's not that southerners are innately right-leaning and that comes out in our predilection for beating the bejeezus out of the kids, it's more like the tendency to be right-leaning and to hit the kids both have their roots in the idea of teaching things simply by holding only one acceptable point of view.

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

yeah, there are a TON of issues that fall out just that way on a US map. red state/blue state means a whooole lot of things to us...including this.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

This is not so much a political map as much as it is a cultural and religious one. Notice the ones that both allow and like to practice Corporeal Punishment are the old Southern States. The ones that allow it, but don't practice it so much are the cowboy states. The culture in both values toughness and self sufficiency. More than that there is a belief that physical discipline is the only way to get through to a misbehaving kid. The Republican Party nowdays can count on the votes from these places because they have been espousing their cultural values.

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

That's not totally fair....that's a broad generalization of Southern states. Coming from and being raised in the South I don't feel that is true at all.

I don't mean that to sound rude or anything. It's just not fair to put that stamp on all of us.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course. Also, the South is changing a lot and quickly. Plus, the South is not one thing; there's a lot of regional variation from what I've seen. The Republicans I think have been really good at rallying a large and angry group of people that have felt left behind in all the economic changes since the late 1970s. Arguing over culture is just a way to avoid talking about economic issues.

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

Very true :) You're wise. I stay out of politics a lot but I respect your opinion. Nice to meet you!

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I'm getting into politics because I've learned that if you don't show up to make decisions, other people will and their interests might not be too close to your own. I figure I'll wind up in a city council once my wife and I get out of grad school and to the place where we're gonna stay for a bit.

Also, half of my family is Southern. Unfortunately, they're kind of expats and they've held onto some of the worst traditions from their home region. And traditions from their home period, the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. My cousins(adults my age--30s to 40s) from that side of the family don't understand their grand parents and parents any more than I understand them. I always had the impression that these people felt threatened and had turned inwards ever tighter until all they had left was the fear. I think a lot of it was getting displaced out to California and finding themselves in a very alien society.

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

I have my opinions and try to at least stay informed but I just don't talk about them too much...especially not in the past few years with the political climate so tense. You never know who may bite your head off. :)

I think it's wonderful that you're getting into politics though. I salute and admire people who go that route...especially intelligent and informed people who are willing to think and challenge themselves and others...as you seem to be. Good luck with grad school! What is your wife studying?

I know people exactly like how you describe your family and I think you are spot on.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I'd been sort of toying with the idea of politics, but between the Bush administration and living in Philadelphia, I've come to see that voting, while necessary, is not sufficient. The situation in Philadelphia is rotten. Same with the state. Power got entrenched here and threw up institutional blocks to any challenger. Reform is enormously difficult. The end result of so much bad politics is bad governance. In practical terms it means that what should be a vibrant and beautiful city is actually a complete shambles. There's some hope in that we just elected a committed reformer as mayor who'd been sitting long enough in city council to know how rotten things had gotten.

Politics is weird though. I've participated a little by going to city council and county board meetings in the past. Unless specific policies have really hit people where they live, the politics is not so divisive at the local level. But, going up to national, ideology really comes into play and people just get into these ossified positions.

The wife's studying Parasites for her PhD and I just finished a Master's in Library and Information Science. I'm toying with the idea of a PhD in something like Computational Sociology or Systems Science(Sociocybernetics).

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

I never responded to this but I really enjoyed chatting via comment. Just a few comments definitely challenged me to think! It's always nice to have conversations like that :)

All the best to you and your wife and Congratulations on getting your master's! I have a friend who is getting hers in religious studies right now but is seriously contemplating going for a Master's in Library and Information Science like you. I think right now she is seeking information about it and experiences from people who have been there done that.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

The field is interesting, Library Science that is. If you have a master's in an academic subject already, that really opens up opportunities in higher education. The basic deal is that despite there being a lot of drudge work day to day, you can step back at some point and go "Holy cow! I did something important!"

I'd recommend doing courses on the meat and potatoes side of the field: Collection Development, Cataloging, Technical Services and so on. I'm not so wild about doing Digital Libraries specifically because, at this point in the game, every aspect of library work has a digital element and the courses are increasingly covering that. In order to get qualify for the good Digital Library jobs, you need a pretty serious programming background. And that increasingly means significant knowledge of Java as a technology(not just a programming language). In fact, I'm not even sure I can get some of these jobs and I've been programming professionally since 91.

However, jobs for library degreed people pop up in the darnedest places. The job I'm currently in is basically a librarian position, but it was advertised as a programming position. I've done jack all programming so far while I've done immense amounts of knowledge organization, cataloging and technical writing.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Quick clarification on what I meant by cowboy states. These states are some of the archetypal Western States. And self reliance is a big part of the regional cultures(plural). That's one thing I've noticed that each of these states has in common. The South? I dunno the Southeast so well. Like Philadelphia, there's a lot of tradition that an outsider can't quite get into. Least ways, that's my experience. I'm kind of from a place that has no traditions so I'm always confounded when I find places where people have habits that span generations and transcend families.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I bet these states are the same ones that led the U.S. to become the only country other than Somalia to NOT ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. What a barbaric perversion of Christianity ("Spare the rod, spoil the child") these people believe in!

[wyldraven.livejournal.com]

Not enough information

The original source of that chart is here (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0808/). There is a lot more information in there, including analyses by gender and race within the states allowing corporal punishment.

And yes, it is appalling. In Texas you have the right as a parent to refuse corporal punishment for your children. I did so with mine. It sad to see that so many apparently didn't.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Wow...what year was that?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was in grade seven that year. I had no idea Ontario was still giving kids the strap at that point. I know no one in my family ever got it, and my brother might well have deserved it that same year.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

The strap was routine in my Ontario elementary school, in the 70s and early 80s. One particular classmate of mine got it at least once a year. It wasn't much of a deterrent, let's just say. :P

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, that's why I think it's better that it's disappearing - it doesn't work.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, that's only a year before I started! If there had been junior kindergarten in my board at that time, I could have had the same experience. (I was born in '83.) That's surreal. I always thought of corporal punishment as something from my parents' era.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

The one with the most punishment (MS) is, I believe, one of the worst states, achievement-wise. SAT/ACT or whatever scores, or grad rates or something should help figure that one out.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2007/r0005.asp

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting....interesting date. Probably too many generalization there but still. America doesn't have their stuff together but we're working on it. Maybe politics should have been your field of study...world politics obviously since you're interested in other countries.

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

Data, rather, not date. I fail at typing today.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Um, yeah. That was me.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, you've heard the old joke about Canada being a country that works better in practice than in theory, right? Nobody really has it together - every country in the world has a chunk of the population convinced that they're doing it all wrong. Some of them are even right. :)

Education systems are naturally of particular interest to me, especially since, when I tell some Americans I'm a teacher, they mentally lump me in with the people from their own region. The comparison is often not favourable.

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

Well boo for them lumping you in and making generalizations. That makes me sad when people do that...especially to teachers. You guys are IT. You have your finger on the pulse of what's happening and what to come...you are helping mold the future...screw politicians it's the teachers who bring new hope and ideas into this world. I think you are a wonderful teacher who thinks outside the box and challenges herself and THINKS and in an excellent field doing hard, underappreciated, noble work. I applaud you and all teachers.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, not trying to be picky, but all I did was correlate some data - I didn't generalize at all. In fact I deliberately avoided generalizing. All I said was that I wanted to read a study that would explore the correlation I'd spotted, to find out if it was valid.

Other people - all of whom have more experience with those states than I do - made the generalizations.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry. I wasn't meaning to be picky either. <3

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, MY STATE allows corporal punishment. It doesn't practice it much, but it matters that it is allowed.
Actually, the first state I looked at on the map was my home state, NY. I grew up thinking that corporal punishment was illegal everywhere.
But I'm a CO voter, and I need to give a shit- even though with hubby's military job, we will likely be residents of a different state by 2010.