This school year, Illinois will become just the fifth state in the nation to prohibit corporal punishment in all schools.
Legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month bans physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools implemented 30 years ago.
When the ban takes effect in January, Illinois will join New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland and New York in prohibiting paddling, spanking or hitting in every school.
State Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat, was inspired to take up the issue after an updated call by the American Association of Pediatrics to end the practice, which it says can increase behavioral or mental health problems and impair cognitive development. The association found that it’s disproportionately administered to Black males and students with disabilities.
“It was an easy thing to do. I don’t want a child, whether they are in private school or public school, to have a situation in which corporal punishment is being used,” Croke said.
Croke was also disturbed by the Cassville School District in southwest Missouri. After dropping corporal punishment in 2001, it reinstated it two years ago as an opt-in for parents. Croke wanted to send a clear message that “it never was going to be OK to inflict harm or pain on a child.”
Much of the world agrees.
The World Health Organization has decreed the practice “a violation of children’s rights to respect for physical integrity and human dignity.” In 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established an obligation to “prohibit all corporal punishment of children.”
The U.S. was the convention’s lone holdout. Americans seemingly take a pragmatic view of the practice, said Sarah A. Font, associate professor of sociology and public policy at Penn State University.
“Even though research pretty consistently shows that corporal punishment doesn’t improve kids’ behavior in the long run — and it might have some negative consequences — people don’t want to believe that,” Font said. “People kind of rely on their own experience of, ‘Well, I experienced corporal punishment. I turned out fine.’ They disregard the larger body of evidence.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, last year introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, to ban corporal punishment in any school receiving federal funds. It was assigned to a Senate committee for a public hearing in May 2023 but has seen no further action.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also rejected constitutional claims against the practice. When junior high pupils in Dade County, Florida, filed a lawsuit challenging physical discipline, the court ruled in 1977 that Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment was reserved for people convicted of crimes; it did not apply to classroom discipline.
Today, 17 states technically allow corporal punishment in all schools, although four prohibit its use on students with disabilities. North Carolina state law doesn’t preclude it but every school district in the state blocked its use in 2018. Illinois lawmakers in 1994 stopped the practice in public schools.
Among states that have completely outlawed it, New Jersey took the unusual step of barring corporal punishment in all schools in 1867. Iowa eliminated it in private schools in 1989. Maryland and New York stopped private school use in 2023.
Private school advocates, who vehemently oppose state intervention, did not oppose the new law.
Schools in the Catholic Conference of Illinois do not use corporal punishment, executive director Bob Gilligan said.
“It’s an anachronistic practice,” he said.
Ralph Rivera, who represents the Illinois Coalition of Nonpublic Schools, said he’s unaware of any member school that uses the practice. While the group usually opposes state meddling in its classrooms, Rivera said, objecting to a corporal punishment ban on principle is a tough sell.
“Even if they don’t do it, they told us to stay out of it, because it doesn’t look good when you say, ‘No, we want to be able to spank children,’” Rivera said.
The law does not apply to home schools. Home-schooled students are subject to the same rules during school hours as those they face after school.
For student athletes, discipline or correction on the football field or the volleyball court would have to go beyond the pale to qualify as corporal punishment, Croke explained during floor debate on the measure last spring.
“We talked in committee about a situation in which maybe a coach said, ‘Run laps,’” Croke said. “I do not believe this would apply by any means because when we tell a kid to run laps, the goal is not necessarily to inflict pain.”
Legislative debate, nonetheless, included Republican concern that imposing the requirement on private schools could facilitate rules affecting, for instance, curriculum or religious teachings.
Croke, whose school-age child attends Catholic school, said her intent was not to open the door to state regulation of private education but rather to “keep kids out of harm’s way.”
“There’s a red line there, that hitting kids should never be allowed,” Croke said.
