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.

[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.

[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.

[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.