If you found out a school administrator had spanked your child, what would you do? I would march right down there and -- well, in more than two dozen North Carolina school systems, I would have no legal recourse. Because they think hitting kids is OK.

Thankfully, the Durham, Orange, Chatham and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems do not allow such a thing to happen. But can you believe that corporal punishment is still used in 26 North Carolina school systems? Person County is one of another 20 counties that don't do it, but don't have anything on the books against it. Physical punishment at school, meted out by someone bigger. Outrageous.

When I saw that the Action for Children North Carolina advocacy organization is proposing to outlaw corporal punishment of disabled students, I was flabbergasted. One, that anyone would be permitted to hit a disabled student, ever. Two, that this is allowed at all. Lord have mercy on those who think it is just fine and dandy for some school official to take a paddle to another person's child.

Physically disciplining a child might end the bad behavior, but at what cost? Teaching students that violence is the way to solve problems? That it is especially effective when a bigger, stronger person carries it out? What kind of lesson is that? Not to mention the pain caused, or the moral and ethical questions.

We need an immediate end to all corporal punishment in every North Carolina school. No phasing out. It is up to our state legislators to make it so, if the individual school systems won't do it themselves. And it is up to us, the voters, to elect legislators who don't tolerate this kind of behavior.

I'd bet that if the same administrator paddling a student paddled a teacher, the police would be called and charges would be filed. I don't care if the parent thinks it is OK for the school to administer physical discipline. It is the responsibility of the government not to carry out sanctioned assault.

Growing up in the mid-1980s in suburban Augusta, Ga., a male administrator at my elementary school was the authority figure who did the paddling of students, boys and girls. Word in the halls was that if you cried first, he barely paddled at all. The whole experience seems warped to me.

There might be plenty of people out there who were spanked by their parents and other elders, and say it kept them in line and they turned out just fine. Maybe so. I was spanked as a child occasionally. But the punishment I most remember was not being allowed to watch the Alvin and the Chipmunks television special because of an incident with my sister. Having something taken away was, one could argue, just as effective. I gave you a personal anecdote, but there are plenty of studies out there disproving physical punishment as more effective than other methods of discipline.

Fear of physical harm is not the way to go. I don't think we should be slack with discipline, at home or in schools. But there are better ways to halt and change behavior than causing physical pain. And emotional pain. No matter how lightly an administrator might mete out corporal punishment, how do they know that student isn't beaten at home? And this is just adding to their defeat, at the one place that could be a refuge.

Children's advocates are asking this year for the state to ban corporal punishment for children with physical, mental or learning disabilities. I'm embarrassed that we have to make it a law at all. No child should be hit at school for any reason by anybody. Shame on anyone who would do so.

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan may be reached at dvaughan@heraldsun.com or 419-6563.