Posted July 23, 2008 – To spank or not to spank … that’s the question in Twiggs County, Ga., where principals are breaking out their paddles this fall to deter misbehaving.

It won’t be the first time that the school district puts the wood to students who act up. Last year, for example, a second-grader was swatted for throwing pencils, as were others who were deemed too unruly for the standard time-out or other methods of discipline, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. But the policy was rarely used.

Teachers and administrators can opt out if they desire, and parents must sign a permission slip to allow their children to be paddled.

"We had a policy but we weren't using it," Ethel Stanley, a member of the school board, told the newspaper. "Sometimes smaller kids will obey better if they have a paddling. The more you give them rope, the more they try. It's something to deter them," she said.

With the Twiggs system experiencing 300 incidents of misconduct – including 62 fights – last year alone, officials say an occasional spanking could help reduce high teacher turnover. The biggest culprits are middle-school students, the campus police chief says. But not everybody agrees that sparing the rod spoils the child.

"Corporal punishment is not an appropriate means of discipline in Houston County ( Ga. ) schools," said Robin Hines, assistant superintendent for school operations. "We have a great deal of confidence in our progressive discipline procedures that utilize classroom strategies as well as school-wide procedures that include detention, in-school suspension and home suspension."

Twenty-eight states do not allow corporal punishment in schools. "It's a hotly debated issue," Sharon Patterson, superintendent of the Bibb County school system, told the Journal-Constitution. "We do use corporal punishment, but it can't be used as a first line of discipline."

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