Spanking paddle

A paddling may be for punishment (normally of a student at school in the United States), for fun, or as an initiation or hazing ritual.

The paddles used for fraternity and sorority initiation ceremonies are often professionally made and engraved with organizational symbols and slogans.

[5] The paddle may have been originally invented for the punishment of enslaved people as a way of causing intense pain without doing any permanent damage to the recipient.

[citation needed] Paddling was mainly used in many parts of the United States (and still is, in a few areas) as a means to discipline misbehaving school students.

[13] Whether or not particular bruises constitute evidence of "serious injury" or "abuse"[14] or "child maltreatment"[15] depends on individual circumstances and can ultimately be settled only by a court of law.

[18] It was alleged that the assistant principal who had administered the punishment had held and swung the paddle with two hands.

[19] In order to prevent such claims, a school district currently may choose to require the handle of a spanking paddle to be "just large enough for a normal one-hand grip".

[20] Or a rule might provide that the handle shall not be more than 4 inches (100 mm) long (just large enough to be held with one hand).

For example, the policies of Bloomfield School District provide that, "Corporal punishment will be administered by spanking the buttocks of a student with a flat-surfaced paddle which is smoothly sanded and has no cracks or holes and that will cause no more than temporary pain and not inflict permanent damage to the body.

The student may be ordered to bend over a chair[24] or desk[25] and, in that position, receive the prescribed number of strokes of the paddle.