I hope these 3 kids get scholarships for college.
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I would literally melt the face off anyone who tried this with my child. Assault is assault, PERIOD, and no, you can’t argue it was in self defense.
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As a guess, because corporal punishment for principled, constitutionally protected protest is a very visible response that draws pointed attention to both the suppression itself and the form of punishment utilized to suppress it. Would we be hearing about it if they’d gotten, essentially, a long-ass detention?
These kids are absolutely not messing around, and they know the game they’re being forced to play in.
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The schools are using physical violence to counter the student’s 1st amendment right to free speech, why are they not being sued into oblivion?
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Corporal punishment has always been about humiliation and shaming. That’s why it is done in such a ritualized way. The impact of this symbolic violence is not to be underestimated.
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I’m not a lawyer, so i’d get lost trying to cite the legal decisions that lead to it, but: young citizens in schools have fewer constitutional rights then most others. 
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Most of the kids in this school were opposed to the idea of the protest?
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The school authorities think it makes sense to suspend kids for skipping class (in full view of staff) for 17 minutes??
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They think hitting kids is a reasonable punishment???
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Think about what those kids are likely to be hearing from their teachers, preachers and parents.
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Authoritarians are vocally attached to corporal punishment, like they’re vocal about flags and songs and statues of dead assholes and other dumb symbols. But it must be understood that when authoritarians yell about stuff, the actual feelings are only about a tenth as strong as they would have to be to get a normal person to yell that loudly; authoritarians are massive queens.
The evidence is that, whenever progressives actually press the issue, conservatives don’t really try that hard to defend corporal punishment. Because, as this story illustrates, it’s pathetic and stupid. School spanking is only frightening if you’re so scared of it that it never happens. Authoritarians are by definition frightened of everything, so it works on them, but they’re not going to talk about that.
Of course, in systems where authoritarians run things unchallenged, corporal punishment will tend to get crueller and crueller, because every time someone fails to be scared of spanking, the authoritarian answer will be to escalate to flogging, or hot pokers, or the Iron Maiden, because “more fear” is the only answer they can conceive of.
That’s something it would be good to remember in these dark times. Trumplings sound terrifying with their dark-ages hate speech, but that’s because they are so much more scared of you than you are of them. I bet if you confiscated the guns of every person with a “cold dead hands” bumper sticker, in 99% of cases the only resistance would be in the form of tears.
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It sorta mirrors the conversation I had with my own teenager. Full disclosure, I’m one of those awful Trump-voting, gun loving people. But when I found out there was a walkout at her school, I told her: If you feel like you need to walk out, you’ll get no static from me. Be prepared to discuss it, and explain it.
I won’t shield you from any consequences, though. Because it’s not easy to stand up for what you believe in. If there are no consequences, it’s not really civil disobedience.
I was proud of the choice she made in the end, independent of her peers.
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We really do have two Americas now. At my kids high school most kids walked out, and the school fully supported it. Those who chose not to were accepted for their choice without shame. Good dialogs ensued. At least one of the Americas can be great.
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Thank you. What parent agrees to let some pervert do this to their child?
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Kids give me hope and among people I consider hero’s a fair number are kids. When some college administrator reads through school applications these 3 young men should rank well. I agree with taking their swats. There’s a lot of power in the scorn those boys chose. It’s like saying we chose to do the right thing not just for ourselves but for students everywhere and for this you react with violence…so who is the more mature?
Thank you guys, You stood for more than a lot of adults do.
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Gasp! In Arkansas???
Never in the Bible belt.
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This is how powerful activists are born. Sad it happened, fucking Arkansas. But now these young adults have the impetus for making real change. I hope they do.
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It has been made very clear that you can’t punish someone walking out of class for political reasons any differently that someone walking out just because. That’s where first amendment rights come in.
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If they had been punished just for being late, then sure, the humiliation could be an effective deterrent. In a civil rights demonstration, not so much. It’s more of a badge of honor. The punishment is proof that people took notice, and itself generates more publicity. Shaming only works if someone accept he has done something he should be ashamed of.
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I find this especially ironic because, if you review Wikipedia’s list of school shootings in the US you will see that the majority seem to be people seeking revenge for corporal punishment.
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You should have driven straight through and out the other side.
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