Oklahoma Lawmakers to Review Corporal Punishment Effectiveness Tuesday

TULSA, OKLA (KTUL) — Oklahoma state lawmakers will gather at the capitol today to review a house study examining the effectiveness of properly administered corporal punishment.

NewsChannel 8 spoke with representative Jim Olsen who’s leading the study and those who oppose corporal punishment.

Representative Olsen tells us that his intent with the interim study is not to come up with legislation or require parents or schools to use corporal punishment if they don’t want to.

but he says that efforts to prohibit corporal punishment are overstepping proper bounds saying schools should have the right to decide if they want to use it or not.

“What I am objecting to is the intention of some to totally prohibit it as an option,” said Olsen. “We just wanna leave it up to them. Some communities would be more in favor of it, some less and there can be difference permitted there.”

Joe Dorman with the Oklahoma institute for Child Advocacy says that Representative Olsen is holding the study in response to House Bill 1028, which would prohibit the use of corporal punishment on certain students.

The latest version of the bill would have prohibited school personnel from using corporal punishment like hitting, slapping, paddling, or any other means of inflicting physical pain on students identified with a disability under state and federal regulations.

But this version wasn’t heard on the house floor.

Dorman believes there are other forms of punishment that are more effective than corporal punishment.

“It’s better for a kid to lose the privilege of leaving school at lunch if they’re in high school or to lose a recess if they’re in grade school. Let’s have some punishment that more closely fits the problem of why they got in trouble, and have them learn from that lesson. I mean, sit there with a teacher’s aide and have to talk about what they did was wrong,” said Dorman. “They’re going to learn more from that than just simply getting a swat and sending them back to their desk.”

According to the study request, the interim study tomorrow will have the testimonies of 2 or three superintendents, 2 child psychologists, one opposing view, the testimony of a homeschooling father, which Olsen says he’ll give, and the study will have a brief look at the scriptures.

The interim study will be tomorrow from one to four on the House’s website.