Last updated: December 2004

The following question was submitted to John Roska, an attorney/writer whose weekly newspaper column, "Q&A: The Law," runs in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Illinois Edition) and the Champaign News Gazette.

Question

 Does Illinois law permit corporal punishment in public schools? 

Answer

No. Corporal punishment has been outlawed in Illinois public schools. In certain situations schools can use "physical restraint," but paddling is a thing of the past.

The law that prohibits corporal punishment in schools isn't as easy to find as it should be, but it's Section 24-24 of the Illinois School Code. It's located at volume 105 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes.

Under a main section 24 devoted to "Employment of Teachers," there's a sub-section 24 on "Maintenance of Discipline." That law says that school discipline policies "shall not include slapping, paddling or prolonged maintenance of students in physically painful positions nor shall it include the intentional infliction of bodily harm."

That seems pretty clear, and doesn't leave much wiggle room for schools to use to get around this prohibition.

The law does permit "physical restraint" to control students, but only if a school has adopted a discipline policy which specifically permits it. A district that permits physical restraint must tell parents, and notify individual parents when their children receive it.
 
Schools must have a local discipline policy, which the School Code encourages school boards to develop using parent-teacher advisory committees. While schools are encouraged to furnish their general discipline policy to parents, they're required to distribute it to students.

The prohibition of corporal punishment in Illinois Schools was apparently passed by the legislature in 1994. A couple of schools in southern Illinois tried to bring back paddling after it was outlawed, by asking the state legislature to waive the prohibition. Their request was voted down 84-28.  

The good old days of student discipline are illustrated by a 1974 newspaper clipping which our office has kept for some reason in its archives. A local "Dean of Boys," whose philosophy was "things which hurt, instruct," stated reassuringly that corporal punishment was used "sparingly," and as a "last resort." Which meant, the article says, that on a daily basis, he swatted about 15 high schoolers and 2 to 6 junior high schoolers.

Today, 23 states still permit corporal punishment, and in 1998 (the latest numbers I could find) about 365,000 kids received it. (That’s down from over 1.5 million kids in 1976.) Texas is tops—it accounts for about one-fourth of all instances of corporal punishment in U.S. Schools.

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