The Memphis school board, one of the last big-city school systems to allow teachers to use the traditional wooden paddle, just voted to ban the use of this corporal punishment. In the 2003-2004 school year, there were 27,918 paddlings for a district with 118,000 students. I'm really surprised to hear this. I thought that all public schools had stopped this a long time ago. And, the number of paddlings seem pretty high. That's almost a paddling for every four students.
