Jeb Bush suggested in his 1995 book “Profiles in Character” that paddling school children could prevent school shootings.
Writing in the same section on shaming for single parents that drew so much heat earlier this week, Bush wrote that poorly performing students should be shamed, too.
To illustrate his point, he noted Walton County, Florida’s success in using corporal punishment.
“The students of these schools will tell you, as will anybody who experienced corporal punishment in school, that it is not the brief spanking that hurts, but the accompanying shame,” he wrote.
He closed with the line, “To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting in any of its schools.”
Bush spokesman Tim Miller replied Friday that Bush’s record on education as governor was strong, including creating the first statewide school voucher program. But he did not immediately say whether the former Florida governor still supports corporal punishment or believes it deters school shootings.
Bush and co-author Brian Yablonski wrote the book in 1995 before some of the nation’s most stunning school shootings, including in Columbine, Colorado in 1998 and Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
Miller said Friday that Bush supported school safety changes in the wake of the Columbine shootings through a voluntary program called “Not in My School,” which included student monitoring and conflict resolution training.
According to a Washington Post tally, Florida is one of 19 states that still allows corporal punishment in schools.
The full passage from “Profiles in Character” continues below:
“It’s not just our inner city streets that are in dire need of sense of shame. We have also lost our shame in our schools, too. Specifically, there is little shame in poor academic performance or classroom misconduct. We now see many students who do not care if the teacher yells at them or if their test results are less than stellar. In many of Florida’s largest school districts, there is little that the teacher can do to make students feel some sense of shame. In some school districts, such as Walton County, one of the oldest forms of shame, corporal punishment, is alive and well, and despite protests by some parents and Florida’s PTAs, the students have actually found that this doling out of shame is very effective. The students of these schools will tell you, as will anybody who experienced corporal punishment in school, that it is not the brief spanking that hurts, but the accompanying shame. A senior valedictorian of one high school in Walton County told a reporter ‘We feel ashamed when it happens to us, but when you’re in that classroom and you want to learn and somebody else won’t let you learn, well, they are dealt with.’ To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting in any of its schools.”