Today in labor history: First school strike against corporal punishment

Today in 1889, the first nationwide school strike against corporal punishment – in Great Britain – took place.

Eventually, corporal punishment – inflicting bodily pain as punishment – was made illegal in the United Kingdom and, by the 1990s and early 2000s, in almost all of Europe. In some countries, corporal punishment was even banned in the home.

In the United States, however, corporal punishment has been banned nowhere in the home, and is still legal in schools in nearly 20 states. The first states to ban the practice in schools were New Jersey and Massachusetts (1867 for the former, not until 1971 for the latter).

The state that most recently banned corporal punishment in schools was New Mexico in 2011.

Image: Blue denotes states where corporal punishment has been banned in schools, red where it has not. Via Wikipedia.