Oklahoma lawmakers rejected a bill on Tuesday that, if passed, would end the use of corporal punishment for students with disabilities.
Corporal punishment is defined in the bill as “intentional physical infliction by beating, paddling, spanking, slapping or other physical force used as a means of discipline.” The legislation would prohibit the use of this form of punishment for students with disabilities under the Disabilities Education Act.
Bill’s vote was 45-43 in favor of a passage, according to KFOR. But the bill failed because a majority of 51 lawmakers was needed to pass.
Rep. John Talley (R) wrote the bill, stating that corporal punishment on students killed “does not belong in the classroom” and that “responsibility and grace go hand in hand,” KFOR reports. But other Republicans voted against the bill, with some citing scripture as justification.
“PROVERBS 29: ‘Rockets and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left behind brings shame to its mother,'” Rep. Jim Olsen (R) saidand added that biblical lines appear to “endorse the use of corporal punishment”.
He is too given an example from a constituent who said that disabled children “do not respond to positive motivation,” but “respond well to corporal punishment.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Cyndi Munson (D), who voted in favor of the bill, opened up about her experience with childhood abuse and why corporal punishment should be banned.
“My mother used chopsticks to slap me on the back… She pulled my hair to make me listen to her, to make me behave,” she said saidadding that he spent more than a decade working with psychologists and therapists to deal with childhood trauma.
She said her father used positive reinforcement and kind words to encourage her and her sister to behave. But she added that the amount of love she gave him – through no fault of her own – was not enough to outweigh how her mother treated her.
“So imagine a child who goes to school, who doesn’t ‘act’,” he said. “Whether they have a disability or not, a child needs to go to a safe place.”
According to The Hechinger Report19 states, including Oklahoma, allow the use of corporal punishment on students in public schools. National, more than 69,000 students receiving physical punishment almost 97,000 times during the 2017-18 school year.
A new study found that out of approximately 291 million children and adolescents are disabled around the world, almost a third have experienced violence, NPR reports. In addition, according to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)Disabled students face a disproportionately high rate of physical punishment nationwide, often being subjected to it as a means of discipline for behavior related to their disabilities and conditions, such as Tourette’s syndrome and autism.
For example, in Tennessee, disabled students are paddled at more than twice the rate of the general population of students. But the The ACLU stated that this statistic is likely an undercount of the violence faced by students killed because there is no report of the mandate of many types of physical punishment that happen.
Harmful use of force and punishment is not a new or uncommon experience for people with disabilities, advocates say. For example, the author se smith pointed out in a tweet responding to the failure of the Oklahoma bill that claims that Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Massachusetts has used electric shock devices in autistic students, although decades-long trial of advocate to stop it.
According to Disability Rights and Education Fund (DREDF), children use behavior to communicate their needs. As a result, they risk losing their educational benefits by being disciplined, suspended, or placed in a restrictive setting.
Schools across the US have adopted it Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), an evidence-based, tiered framework used to support students’ behavioral, academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs and very beneficial for disabled students.