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Bill Requiring Schools to Get Parents' Permission Before Spanking Kids Passes Texas House
Filed under: In The News
Some 40 Texas school districts -- including Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington -- already ban paddling. Credit: Getty Images
A bill before the Texas Legislature would require school authorities to get parents' permission taking the ol' "board of education" to their children's backsides.
Time was in Texas, you could shoot a child down like a dog in the street for chewing gum, and all you had to do was offer the parents a nice piece of pecan pie as punishment. If you were feeling sociable, that is.
Then again, those could just be tall tales told by nostalgic Texans.
But there's no doubt Texas may be coming an easier place for kids to park their cabooses. The Dallas Morning News reports the bill to get parents' permission before padding passed the Texas House May 12.
The bill was shot down (no, not literally) by legislators the day before, but was later approved 87-56 after what the Morning News says was an "emotional" debate on the floor of the House.
Some 40 Texas school districts -- including Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington -- already ban paddling. It's mostly a rural thing, the Morning News reports. In 2006-2007 (the freshest stats available, according to the newspaper), almost 50,000 young Texans were paddled.
That makes Texas the biggest paddler in the country, and State Rep. Alma Allen, D-Houston, is not proud of that distinction.
Allen wrote the bill and tells the Morning News it boils down to a "parental rights" issue. Yeah, well, school officials have some rights, too, critics argue. One of them is the right to paddle an unruly young owl-hoot into next Tuesday without playing Mother May I.
"We are taking away every tool for teachers to maintain discipline in their classrooms," State Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, argued during the debate. He said behavioral problems in the classroom are teachers' No. 1 headache.
Really? Their No. 1 headache? You would think the fact that Texas legislators are cutting $5 billion from public schools and laying off as many as 100,000 teachers might make a few educators reach for the aspirin bottle as well.
Teachers may want to paddle some butts raw at this point. However, those butts may not belong to students.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
5-13-2011 @ 6:10PM
Tina said...If I had kids they would get my permission but if I'm half as good as raising my own kids as I am of others, they wont be any discipline/behavioral problems thus no need for the spanking...
Reply
5-14-2011 @ 4:03PM
Jordan Riak said...Currently, the only people in Texas who can legally batter another human being on the buttocks with a weapon as part of their paid professional duties are 1) porn stars, 2) prostitutes and 3) schoolteachers. This grouping may be a bit unfair to members of groups 1 and 2. In those cases, participants in the activity do so as freely consenting adults. Not so in schools.
Reply
5-17-2011 @ 4:07AM
Shell said...I remember when we were afraid of getting in trouble at school because when the principal was done with you ,you had to go home and get it from mom for being bad ,none of this oh what did you do to my baby and my baby can do whatever stuff and now I'm suing .. This started when I was ending middle school and I started noticing the more other kids learned there was no repercussions for their actions the more they just did what they wanted and even laughed at the teachers..Poor teachers today are damned if they do and damned if they don't ..
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