JACKSON (AP) — Mike Kent and John Jordan said they each got their share of whacks with a paddle when they were children.

‘‘It embarrassed me because back in those days, they paddled you in front of the whole class,’’ said Jordan, interim state superintendent of education. ‘‘They could really burn it on you.’’

‘‘It was brutal,’’ Kent, superintendent of Madison County Schools, said with a chuckle. He noted that paddles used then, in the 1960s, were much longer than the ones used today.

The punishment got his attention and left no lasting scars, Kent said.

Kent still favors paddling. Jordan doesn’t. The men represent opposing sides of the debate over corporal punishment.

As superintendent of Oxford public schools in 1994, Jordan worked with the school board to end corporal punishment in the district. Kent’s district, like many statewide, practices corporal punishment.

Mississippi has one of the nation’s highest rates of corporal punishment.

During the 2008-09 school year, there were 57,953 cases of corporal punishment in 110 of the state’s 152 school districts, according to the state Department of Education. The number of incidents is a slight drop from 58,343 cases reported a year earlier but higher than the 47,727 cases reported in 2006-07.

Corporal punishment is ‘‘simply a tool in the toolbox,’’ Kent said. ‘‘We can call parents, we can fuss at kids, we can detain them, we can suspend them, we can put them in … detention, and we can paddle them.’’

Students are paddled for flagrant disrespect toward any one person, Kent said. Paddling could be a punishment for horseplay, tardiness and skipping class, he said.

In most school districts, more serious offenses — such as fighting — have stiffer consequences. Other punishments, including suspension or detention, are often used instead of corporal punishment.

School districts restrict the number of times a child can be hit and the size of the paddle used. Generally, students are hit about three times. Many district policies require an adult to witness the punishment.

In Madison County, at least one of the adults involved in the punishment has to be the same race as the child and another adult has to be of a different race, Kent said. Otherwise, the door is open for ‘‘potential outlandish charges or for speculation,’’ he said.

Parents can ask that their children not be paddled. For instance, this school year in DeSoto County, 2,505 parents sent letters to their schools asking that their children not be paddled, district spokeswoman Katherine Nelson said. Another 2,109 parents asked school administrators to call them beforehand.

Kent, in Madison County, said even if a parent agrees to let the child be paddled, the child can still object to being paddled.

‘‘We’re not going to wrestle with anybody,’’ he said.

Jordan said he doesn’t believe corporal punishment is the best form of discipline. But there’s also a downside to ending the practice.

Alternatives to corporal punishment usually involve taking students out of a learning environment and sending them home, Jordan said.

‘‘Out-of-school suspensions greatly escalated in the three to four years after we (Oxford public schools) disallowed the use of corporal punishment in our district,’’ he said.

One effective way of punishing students is to remove them from the classroom and give them Saturday detention, he said. It’s also best to establish a climate where students, principals and teachers respect each other, he added.

Parents should review school discipline plans in the handbooks given to students each year, said Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. Parents also should review state law to ensure the school discipline plans apply. If not, the concerns should be taken to the district’s school board, she said.

‘‘Corporal punishment is not a scientifically based process,’’ Lambright said. There is no study that shows the physical punishment is effective, she said.

Each year, the Mississippi ACLU gets 20 to 30 calls from parents — most often in north Mississippi and the Delta or in the southern half of the state — concerned about how their children were punished at school, Lambright said.

Those parents usually believe the punishment went too far because the child was injured or bruised. Some parents call when they have asked school leaders to call before paddling the child or not to use corporal punishment, but it’s done anyway.