Lawmakers Keep Ban On School Spanking

Moderate Republicans in the California Assembly broke ranks Tuesday with their conservative colleagues and helped administer a stinging rebuke to a controversial bill repealing the state’s decade-old ban on corporal punishment in the classroom.

Capping an hour of often emotional debate, the Assembly rejected the bill by Republican Assemblyman Mickey Conroy on a surprisingly decisive 47-19 vote that saw 10 Republicans join in opposition with 36 Democrats and one independent.

“You had a bunch of young freshman Republicans raised in the 1960s who never knew the benefits of corporal punishment,” Conroy said. “They just didn’t get it.”

Democrats labeled Conroy’s idea a throwback to a more inhumane age and an intolerable intrusion into matters best left up to parents. They also echoed studies showing that paddling and other forms of humiliating physical punishment teach children the wrong lessons about violence while breeding resentment, embitterment and anger.