By Alex Stuckey
April 17, 2014
STL
JEFFERSON CITY • Through 13 years of teaching, Jennifer Kavanaugh never dreamed of hitting a child — not even once.
Kavanaugh, now a fifth-grade teacher at St. Margaret of Scotland School in St. Louis, previously taught in a school where children were physically punished for bad behavior, but she never participated.
She knows there are teachers across the state who do, however, and she wants it stopped.
“All studies point to the fact that corporal punishment does not make for a more peaceful, happier child,” she said at the Capitol on Wednesday.
Kavanaugh and about 30 of her fifth-grade students attended a hearing Wednesday on a bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Keaveny, D-St. Louis, that would ban corporal punishment, or spanking, in both public and private schools in the state. The Senate Committee on Progress and Development unanimously passed the bill Wednesday afternoon.
“We need to stop assaulting our kids,” Keaveny said.
Missouri is one of 19 states that still allows corporal punishment in schools. The most recent states to ban it were New Mexico, in 2011, and Ohio, in 2009. Illinois also has a ban on this form of discipline, according to the Center for Effective Discipline, a National Child Protection Training Center program.