Back in September, a report by Action for Children North Carolina reported that only six school districts still allow corporal punishment of students.

But only one - Robeson County - is doing much of it. Robeson students received disciplinary blows 141 times in the last school year.

We've always believed this is a terrible and probably counterproductive way to maintain order in schools. And now we have the best evidence yet. A new book by sociologist Murray Straus reviews hundreds of scholarly studies of spanking and concludes that using physical violence as a punishment creates a host of problems, which include delaying cognitive development and increasing a child's tendency toward violence and crime.

The studies also draw a direct correlation between the spanking of children and their later beating up of their dating and marital partners.

Straus writes that, "More than 100 studies have detailed these side effects of spanking, with more than 90 percent agreement among them. There is probably no other aspect of parenting and child behavior where the results are so consistent."

Robeson school leaders might want to heed that wisdom.