Ending Corporal Punishment In Schools
3 min read
In Texas, a sophomore girl was spanked by her male vice principal. This is an awful event, and something that no one should have to go through as part of their schooling.
The girl - Taylor Santos - agreed to the beating rather than have an additional day of in-school suspension, and the girl's mother - Anna Jorgensen - agreed to it as well. Both mother and daughter thought that the beating would be administered by a woman.
When the mother saw the aftermath of the beating, and learned that it had been administered by a man, her feelings changed.
"I knew school policy was females swatted females, and males swatted males. If Taylor wanted that, I said that would be fine," Jorgenson told WFAA, adding that she was horrified when she saw the results of the spanking and learned of who did the swatting. "It looked almost like it had been burned and blistered, it was so bad," Jorgensen said of her daughter's behind.
And, of course, the cynic in me thinks that the only reason we are hearing about this is because the student is a white girl, and the person who beat her is an adult male. Visually, the power differential here is compelling, and it makes for television that fuels a sense of collective outrage. Unfortunately, kids get beat in schools frequently. We know that males, African-American students, Native American students, and students with disabilities are more likely to be beaten in school than other students. But we don't hear about this, and even congressional testimony doesn't seem to change things.
I want a television news story when any kid gets hit in school. I want to know their name, the person who hit them, the school they attend - all of it. I want this information publicly available and discoverable on the internet via search, so we can attach names and faces and identities and human stories to the statistics. I want people to be able to see the people who are hit in our schools under the guise of discipline, because I cannot believe that we would allow this to continue if more people knew more specifics.
It should never have happened to Taylor Santos, and it should never happen to anyone else.
Image Credit: The photo in this blog post is a still from the video posted on the WFAA web site.
