The United States of America has allowed states to have their school instructors enforce human torture on children. As of 1971 to 2022, 19 U.S. states have allowed corporal punishment; the majority of them being red states: North and South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, etc. Children from the age of 4 are being shown that savagery is not wrong. 

Seen as a method to discipline students and keep them engaged, “In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Ingraham v. Wright decision that school corporal punishment is constitutional, leaving states to decide whether to allow it,” Elizabeth T. Gershoff and Sarah A. Font inform in their article “Corporal Punishment in the U.S. Public Schools: Prevalence, Disparities in Use, and Status in State and Federal Policy”. Students are subjugated to witness physical abuse by teachers; leaving teachers with tyrannical power that, at times, is not used appropriately. 

The use of objects to administer corporal punishment can lead to severe student injuries. The National Library of Medicine recalls that the Garcia ec rel. Garcia v. Miera; 1987 and Hardy; 2013 fought for states to repeal the permission of corporal punishment as, “… children [suffer] from a range of injuries as a result of school corporal punishment that often requires medical treatment, including bruises, hematomas, nerve and muscle damage, cuts, and broken bones. The Society for Adolescent Medicine (2003) has estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 students require medical attention as a result of school corporal punishment every year. These injuries likely result from the use of objects, such as paddles, to hit the children.”  

“Humanity is definitely not at its core. Parents and people are oblivious to the harm we are inflicting on the next generation. It is more difficult to be a parent than a teacher, but corporal punishment is not acceptable to children as a form of discipline. Humanity needs to wake up!” said Mrs. Schiffer, a teacher at North. 

Physical punishment is allowed through, “spanking and paddling the most common choices,” the publicschoolreview.com states in their article “Teachers in 19 States Allowed to Physical Punishment Students,” written by Grace Chan. Given fierce authority, there should be no surprise that wielding yardsticks and rulers will be used by teachers to their advantage.

Hitting a child does not make them learn but rather influences demented morale to do the same and show fear and discontent with learning. Students will further depart from learning and have their primary focus be violence if they are seeing and adapting that in their age of development. 

Inflicting any type of punishment at any early age encumbers the child’s moral behavior and makes the child develop early signs of violence. Both court cases, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, 2016 and Regey Gueronsela, and Atzaba-Portia, 2012 aimed to justify the bellicose adopted to students because of punishment received from an early age. Moreover, “The more children receive corporal punishment, the more likely they are to be aggressive and to misbehave over time, over and above how aggressive or disobedient they are initially,” The National Library of Medicine states. Children are not to be developed as civilized when shown that violence is allowed.

“If we keep on allowing dehumanizing a child’s education, then we really have no hope for the future,” said sophomore Daniel Puga.

Children from the age of 4 are shown that inflicting violence on someone else is acceptable, which only promotes savagery and a society that loses its morality. Kids are our future, however, they are being taught that hitting someone is a good discipline for them, which only promotes a society that relies on violence instead of holding ethical values. If nuclear warfare does not wipe humanity, then children will.