About a year ago, Roger Stephens, 61, strolled into a Stone Mountain Walmart and smacked a crying 2-year-old girl. Annoyed by the little girl’s crying, he had at first warned the mother, “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

Next time he passed mother and child, he grabbed the wailing toddler and struck her four or five times across the face, then told the mom, “See, I told you I would shut her up.” Stephens was arrested and charged with felony cruelty to children.

In January he was sentenced to a year in jail. In the comments section of an online article reporting the judgment, outcry was immediate. The first responder, in a bellow that is becoming the voice of Typical America, opined, “Next time I’m betting he hits harder! Good lord …. a YEAR for 4-5 hits?! He should have slapped the mother for NOT BEING a mother!” To which another disciplinarian responded: “HEAR! HEAR! About time someone did this, you can’t control your brat, leave the damn thing at home.”

Corporal punishment. It’s one of those hot-button topics, an issue endlessly - and rabidly - debated. According to recent polls, nearly half of Americans believe it an acceptable method to discipline a child. And that method is legal in 21 states, including every one of them within the Deep South, home of the whuppin’, the spanking, the fear that sparing the rod will spoil the child.

Typical of this mindset is John C. Calhoun Elementary in Calhoun Hills, S.C., a school once rampant with discipline issues, where nearly 90 percent of the students live below the poverty line. Six years ago David Nixon, with six years of high school agriculture teaching and absolutely no administrative experience, took the principal position. With him he brought a wooden paddle, 2 feet long, the handle wrapped with duct tape. According to “Newsweek,” Nixon had not been in his new position 30 minutes when the father of one of his new students told him, “I want to give you the authority to whip my son’s butt.”

Nixon took the man’s offer and reintroduced corporal punishment to the children, administering three decisive licks to kids who have committed “major offenses” like fighting and stealing. Discipline has improved dramatically; order has been restored.

Still, most education scholars - and the other half of Americans - consider the tradition abusive. The whipping, they say, is helpful only in the short run - and is just as likely to predicate future violence. Nadine Block, the executive director of the Center for Effective Discipline in Ohio, says that corporal punishment “is not a practice for the 21st century. Maybe for the 18th century. An atmosphere of fear is not going to increase learning. Maybe temporarily. But over time, it does not work.” Even the John C. Calhoun counselor objects, saying, “I’m not crazy about it. A lot of these kids come from violent homes, and kids see this as another violent act.”

Full disclosure: Growing up, I had my fair share of Mississippi whippings, occasionally from my dad, more rarely from my mom, most from teachers ready to swing for the fences over every seemingly minor offense. In school during the 1970s, the Golden Age of Corporal Punishment, the age of the fabled electric paddle, I was whipped and paddled, smacked and popped through much of elementary and middle, suffering consequences (and a stinging bum) for everything from forgetting a pencil to eschewing homework to asking the wrong question of the wrong teacher at the wrong time.

Still disclosing: Victim of the philosophy that if it was good enough for others, it was good enough for me, I brought the tradition into my family, occasionally giving my older two boys a swat when I felt the circumstances merited it. I brought what I considered civility into the proceedings, talking to the boys beforehand, asking if they understood why they were being punished and hugging them afterward.

What I have since wondered is why we, as a society, stop. Why stop smacking when the smackees turn 12 or 15 or even 18? Why not bring corporal punishment (a euphemism if there ever was one, a cloak of words we use to cover the fact that we’re choosing to hurt our own children) into the adult world? Seriously. Aren’t there adults far more deserving of a good paddling, one that leaves their eyes teary and their behinds afire?

What about the woman in front of you who fails to use her blinker? Shouldn’t she be spanked? What about the colleague who constantly arrives late for work? Wouldn’t a paddling solve that issue? What about the clerk who gets your order wrong? Wouldn’t a whipping improve her memory? What about the boss who throws tantrums and mistreats his workers? Wouldn’t a thrashing remind him of proper office etiquette?

After some thought, Lori and I decided that paddling was not the answer. There were better ways to discipline, to teach, to make our sons see the errors (and dangers) of their innocent ways. To the occasional frustration of my older two, my youngest has yet to receive a physical punishment. And so far, he seems every bit as whole and adjusted as the other two.

In those early, pre-paddling discussions, what I saw in my boys’ eyes was fear. Afterward, what I saw was humiliation. Why would any adult want to inflict that on anyone - much less their own?

Jack Slay is a member of LaGrange Writers Group.