When I was in the third grade, we had a teacher who was mean, cruel and scared us to death. If you were just sorta bad — say, you tracked mud into the classroom after recess — she’d make you sit in the closet where they kept the hats, coats, mittens, boots and bag lunches. It was dark in there with the door closed and the lights off, and as you huddled on the wet floor in shame, overwhelmed by the smell of peanut butter and grime, you could hear her through the door, telling the other students that’s what happens to thoughtless students who can’t live by the rules.
But the closet was for minor infractions. For the big stuff, she’d take you out in the hall and slap the palms of your hands with a wooden ruler until they turned red, or draw a circle on the blackboard just high enough to be at nose level if you stood on tiptoes. Then, she’d make you stand at the front of the class with your nose pressed against the blackboard in that circle until she judged enough time had passed to teach the desired lesson. The worst was when she’d make you sit in the cubby beneath her desk, with your arms and legs contorted to fit in the cramped space. When she sat at the desk, the kid being punished always got a good look up her skirt — and in the fullness of time, I realized that she knew it.
Many of those who got a dose of her corrective measures were afraid to tell their parents, because they didn’t want to confess what they’d done to bring on the punishment. A few of us did tell, but it didn’t do any good. Those were the days when teachers were the absolute rulers in their classrooms and given plenty of leeway to maintain order as they saw fit. My parents, who were the most caring and supportive adults I would ever know, suspected I was exaggerating what had happened. No teacher would make a student look up her skirt. They’d met her at Parents’ Night, and they just couldn’t believe it.
Then, shortly after the school year ended, that teacher was arrested and charged with murder after throwing her own child down the basement stairs. Our parents carried the guilt of not listening to us and doing nothing for years. But in spite of their efforts at getting the school board to change its policies regarding punishment, nothing was done, and that school district kept allowing teachers and administrators to dole out corporal and other individual punishments until after I graduated high school, when the state set a policy that forbade paddling and set strict guidelines for dealing with classroom infractions. (I saw that teacher decades later when she got out of prison and was working the night shift at a 7- Eleven. I recognized her immediately when I went to the counter to pay for my purchases, and even as an adult felt fear in her presence. She did not recognize me until I reminded her. Then she looked a little scared.)
Even today, there’s no national policy regarding punishment of students, corporal or otherwise. In 1977, the United States Supreme Court ruled that spanking or paddling is lawful unless local authorities forbid it. And while 31 states have expressly abolished corporal punishment in schools, 19 states still allow it, mostly in the South. There is no standardized national policy regarding other types of in-class punishment unless the punishment is so severe it becomes a criminal matter, or the school district finds itself involved in a lawsuit brought by distraught parents.
That was never a problem when our kids were in New Jersey schools. This state was the first to ban corporal punishment in state schools in 1867, and even bans it in private schools. There is also a strict code of discipline and punishment that teachers can use in the classroom. Infrequent infractions are usually dealt with promptly and severely.
But it’s not that way in other parts of the country. A horrifying column by Bill Lichtenstein in last Sunday’s New York Times told of his heartwrenching experience after discovering that his 5-year-old daughter — who had behavioral problems — had been made to stand alone on the cement floor of a mop closet for hours. When her parents found her, she was naked (she had taken her clothing off because she didn’t want to soil it) and standing in a puddle of her own urine. She had been locked in the closet five times that morning. They later learned that she had been locked in the closet almost daily for three months — sometimes for behavioral problems, sometimes for more minor infractions like not following directions — where she would pound on the door and scream for help, according to staff members who heard her and did nothing. When the Lichtensteins brought the situation to state authorities, no formal investigations were launched, and a lawsuit brought by the parents was settled when the school district agreed to pay for treatment the child needed to deal with the trauma of her ordeals.
The author detailed several similar cases around the country, including a fourth-grade boy in Kentucky who was stuffed in a duffel bag with the drawstrings pulled tight and left outside his classroom. I don’t know what his parents did, but if he were my son, I’d have been tempted to go Buford Pusser on them with a baseball bat.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut, but since America has no use for them at the moment, what other cool job can a youngster aspire to besides sports hero? There are probably plenty, but I think Matt Haverly, a 36-year-old guy in Pasadena, Calif., has perhaps the best job in the country, and one that almost any kid would want. He’s one of the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who drives the $2.5 billion robot vehicle Curiosity on Mars (the world’s most expensive remote-controlled car). As he said, “Last night I drove on Mars, today I mowed the lawn — it’s completely surreal.” Forget a bunch of kids. I want that job. Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].