Should schools bring back the cane?

[Kaimani]

Jack never got drunk, it was never vicious - and he didn't always win.

 

(I broke his nose [it had been broken before] in one session.)

 

His 'punishments' were severe. He used to beat me up. - But (usually) I deserved it. I knew the rules, I'd (usually) broken them and it was a voluntary sport. I could've quit any time I liked.

 

I learnt a lot. And I'm grateful. - To him and to the other teachers.

 

interesting point. i've said before that i was a terrible child. academically very good (won a lot of trophies etc) but was just terrible. and i've said a lot of times i deserved a lot of the thrashings i got. people are always surprised.

and i too am thankful for their work. it can't have been easy.

[Rupert_Baehr]

Well I certainly wasn't the 'best behaved' kid on the block.

 

I was charged with being: 'Unlawfully in possession of a Public Works Bus Stop sign at (or about) Two o'clock in the morning." - Dozy's girlfriend wanted a bus stop sign so we went and got one. We were carrying it along a quiet road at about 2 am (having 'borrowed' it from the PW yard) when a police car went by.

 

Dozy dropped his end and it went 'CLANNNGGGG' - which alerted the Police. "OY! You! Come here!" We legged it. They got out of the car and gave chase ... c'mon ... fat coppers? - I got away. Dozy gave himself up. They sent him back to school to get me.

 

Gated for 10 weeks! No longer a prefect. Didn't have to go to court, though. - The charges were dropped. (I was a smart arse even then ... I asked how two young fit policemen couldn't manage to catch a child (I was under 18 and anyway, the age of majority was 21 then) who was running away from them. It wouldn't have looked at all good in the local paper, would it? :hihi:)

[Kaimani]

Well I certainly wasn't the 'best behaved' kid on the block.

 

I was charged with being: 'Unlawfully in possession of a Public Works Bus Stop sign at (or about) Two o'clock in the morning." - Dozy's girlfriend wanted a bus stop sign so we went and got one. We were carrying it along a quiet road at about 2 am (having 'borrowed' it from the PW yard) when a police car went by.

 

Dozy dropped his end and it went 'CLANNNGGGG' - which alerted the Police. "OY! You! Come here!" We legged it. They got out of the car and gave chase ... c'mon ... fat coppers? - I got away. Dozy gave himself up. They sent him back to school to get me.

 

Gated for 10 weeks! No longer a prefect. Didn't have to go to court, though. - The charges were dropped. (I was a smart arse even then ... I asked how two young fit policemen couldn't manage to catch a child (I was under 18 and anyway, the age of majority was 21 then) who was running away from them. It wouldn't have looked at all good in the local paper, would it? :hihi:)

 

 

I was charged with being: 'Unlawfully in possession of a Public Works Bus Stop sign at (or about) Two o'clock in the morning." - Dozy's girlfriend wanted a bus stop sign so we went and got one. We were carrying it along a quiet road at about 2 am (having 'borrowed' it from the PW yard) when a police car went by.

 

:hihi::hihi:

i've just freaked my son out by laughing so hard i had to lay flat!

 

is this here or in Germany, you went to school?

[craigmason]

yes and the slipper and board rubber to hit unruly kids on the head

[Rupert_Baehr]

You see that is fine as you are a caring and responsible parent but what about the children of parents who don't give a stuff? Their offspring are out of control, if teachers try to discipline them one of three things happens

 

1. They are physically or verbally abused by the pupil

 

2. The parent suddenly becomes a model parent, declaring their litttle darling to be an angel and they know their rights

or

3. The parent goes down and verbally or physically attacks teacher

 

I admit the teachers wanted corporal punishment abolished but now we are reaping the whirlwind in our schools and on our streets.

 

When I was a teacher, we had 'parent teacher evenings' for each class. (When I was a kid, that was unheard of.)

 

We sent home chits inviting parents to select the times they wanted to see each teacher. Some students brought back a fully-completed booking form the next day. Their parents were the parents we didn't need to see.

 

Some parents had to be phoned at home. They were often 'too busy' to come to school. Those were the parents I really needed to see.

 

I phoned some parents and I wrote letters to others. (I got into a deal of trouble for that - My wife may be a diplomat, but I'm not.:hihi:)

 

I didn't care about the 'trouble'. "If my attempts to obtain the best deal for my students have breached the school's ethos you can always fire me ...I'll go talk to my union rep" solved those problems, but I did care about my students. - Nothing to do with 'altruism' or 'Professional pride' (or even arrogance - and I certainly don't lack that) but rather that I (like most other people) hate to see my efforts go unrewarded.

 

The money does help, but (I suspect) few teachers are in the job to get rich. The real reward (for me) was to see students achieve in accordance with their capabilities and (if you're really lucky) to see students do better than you had even hoped. The kick in the teeth is to see students do far worse than they might have done and that is even more galling when the parents aren't prepared to support their children.

 

There is certainly a discipline problem in schools today (compared to when I was at school, 40-odd years ago.)

 

It's not the case that children today are unmanageable, but rather that they are unmanaged.

 

(I'm not going to list the 'crimes' [well, they would be criminal nowadays ... remember my comments about 'azide chemistry'?] I committed. My generation were at least as rebellious as those of today, but we did have known barriers (barriers which we breached, too.))

[Rupert_Baehr]

...

 

is this here or in Germany, you went to school?

 

In between. In the Channel Islands. Queen Elizabeth l founded my school in 1563.

 

The children of Jersey were (presumably) deemed to be too thick to be educated at that time. Their school was founded by Queen Victoria a bit later.

 

Donkeys (and Rabbits) are far smarter than Toads.:hihi:

[Rupert_Baehr]

yes and the slipper and board rubber to hit unruly kids on the head

 

My mum was a teacher. Some teachers throw chalk. She threw board rubbers.

 

And she never missed.

 

I was about 25. I was home on leave. I can't remember why, but I needed totalk to my mother about something, so I went to her school, went to the classroom, knocked and waited until she said: "Come in!"

 

(That wasn't just 'being polite' - That was being wise.)

 

I went over to her desk, said what I wanted to say and then she reached up and grabbed the hair in front of my ear and twisted it downwards.

 

That does make your eyes water!!

 

She brought me to my knees (quite literally!) - and my eyes were watering quite obviously.

 

Then she said: "Don't say anything!" and let go. I got up, said goodbye and left.

 

As I left the classroom she said to the kids (who were very, very quiet) : "That man is my son. He's far bigger than any of you lot. If I can do that to him, just imagine what I could do to you?"

 

Apparently, that class behaved impeccably for the rest of the year.

[joiner andy]

Why do you associate the cane with fear? (Serious question ... see below.)

 

 

 

And perhaps 'you' need to earn the right to go to school? If a teacher (or other authority) has to 'earn' your respect, what do you have to do to earn the right to have that teacher/authority spend time on you? - It's not a one-way street.

 

 

 

To paraphrase Mrs Beeton:

 

"First, catch your hare have your child."

 

I had a neighbour who 'disciplined' (beat) his child for the slightest infraction. He wasn't a sadist (I don't think he was, anyway) but he had little idea of how small children think and he relied upon the (totally daft) dictum 'spare the rod, spoil the child.' I think he genuinely thought that if he didn't beat his child, the child would grow up to be something really nasty.

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that his son did grow up to be something nasty. If I'd been treated like that I would.

 

When I was 11, I went to a boarding school.

 

In the boarding house there were various 'grades':

 

Prefects (Vl formers)

Seniors (Vl formers who were not yet prefects)

Semi-Seniors (lVth and Vth form)

'Big Boarders' (lll form)

Juniors (lst and llnd form.)

 

In theory, anybody could beat anybody junior to them - but (supposedly) with a reason. That was very wrong. In practice, semi-seniors (very occasionally) beat juniors (wrong) seniors didn't bother, but prefects could - and did - beat juniors and big boarders for infractions such as 'talking after lights out.'

 

The sort of beating a junior would get for talking after lights out was a smack (maybe two) on the backside with a slipper. In retrospect, it wasn't a major problem. Swift punishment meted out straight away [and we all had soft slippers - so it didn't hurt much ) When I was a prefect, I was hated. (As I found out a few years later.) I didn't beat people.

 

When we got up in the morning, everybody (below seniors) went for a run. After that, we had a shower. Anybody who I caught making a lot of noise after lights out (pillow-fighting, usually ) got a cold shower.

 

The house masters could beat boarders.

 

In the main school, beatings were done by the Headmaster (if you were really unlucky ... he was a tennis player and his forehand was formidable!) or by the head of Junior (lllrd form and below) school. John A Karran. (Known as 'Jackass' because that's what his signature looked like.)

 

It was fair. - Very fair (as I found out.)

 

One one occasion, during what should've been a French lesson, my class was sitting in the School hall because the annual elocution competition was taking place and my French teacher (who had won an Olympic Gold medal for ski jumping just down the road from where I now live) in 1936 - Eddie the Eagle was a latecomer was one of the judges. He told us: "If you're not interested in what's going on, play cards or something - just keep quiet." I did play cards (had a pack in my pocket) was caught and sent to be beaten.

 

I was incensed! I told Karran I had been doing as I was told and hadn't done anything wrong, but he said: "You have to be beaten and I have to do it!" And I was ...but I couldn't really feel it. Probably the gentlest beating in the history of corporal punishment.

 

There was another teacher (who - fortunately for me) had ceased being a housemaster in the boarding house the term before I got there. When he beat kids, they bled. He was a b**t**d!

 

Corporal punishment was a fact of life - but it happened very infrequently. We had 'detention' (hardly a problem for boarders - we were there anyway) and 'Squad' (which was [usually] a physically-exhausting punishment.)

 

If you upset the PSI (the Sergeant-Major, a retired RSM who was the senior NCO in the School Combined Cadet Force) you would be invited to his office, given about 4 or 5 hundred .303 cases, a can of Brasso and a cloth and told to polish them and line them up in lines of one hundred. When you'd done that (took about an hour) he would knock them all over, tell you the line wasn't neat enough ..."Oh, and now they're all dirty ... do it again." Some people hated him.

 

He also shouted at people. "YOU BLOODY TICK-TOCKER; YOU! YOU CAN'T MARCH! YOU'RE NOT TRYING! ... Promise me you'll try, Just for me, eh? Just for Old Nick" (His name was Nick) ... "Cos if you don't try ... If you won't try for Old Nick, I'll cry. AND IF I CRY, I'LL BLOODY WELL DROWN YOU YOU LITTLE B**T**D!"

 

There was no shortage of punishments. But then again, there was no shortage of rewards, too. More carrots than sticks. If you did well, you were praised effusively and publicly.

 

It was a good school. We knew where we stood. We knew what we were supposed to do, what would happen if we did something wrong - and what would happen when we did something well. There was rather more of the latter than the former.

 

Schools nowadays don't seem to reward students for doing well, but nor can they punish them effectively for doing wrong. The cane (or the slipper, from a prefect) was only one side of the coin - and it was the side you didn't see very often.

 

When I taught in a (very good) state school in England, we had no effective means of punishing people who did wrong ...but we didn't seem to reward those who did well, either.

 

My secondary school was a fee-paying school. (I had a scholarship; my parents couldn't have afforded to send me there.) My parents were prepared to work with the school to ensure that I did well. Those parents who were paying considerable sums to send their children to school were also interested in seeing that their children behaved and studied.

 

I went to school in the 50's and 60's. The cane and the slipper were used - but not excessively. Discipline was more than corporal punishment (plenty of other punishments, as I've noted above) but there were rewards (and I'm not talking about paying students to attend school, either.) Discipline in schools is far more complex than corporal punishment.

 

My teachers worked hard. Teachers today work hard. My teachers were (comparatively) far better paid and better treated and respected (both by those in their care and by society in general) than are teachers nowadays.

 

Times have changed. It seems that today, many parents wash their hands of the their children. It's up to the school. If the child misbehaves - that's the school's problem. If the child bunks off - that's the school's problem. If the child doesn't achieve the grades the parent hoped for - that's the school's problem

 

If you want to improve discipline, behaviour and standards in schools, you don't need to re-introduce the cane ... unless you are going to cane the parents.

 

Discipline starts at home. Or rather (in all too many cases) it doesn't.

 

 

 

 

My school did a lot of sport. 4 PE/swimming lessons a week, cross-country runs after school 2 days a week, team games twice a week, squash at night and boxing during the Spring term (if you wanted to.) - The advantages of being a 6-day per week school with a dedicated (and very well-paid) staff.

 

We had 2 PE teachers. Robin was a 'professionally trained' teacher - a brilliant gymnast.

 

Jack was an ex professional player. Played football for Tottenham Hotspur, Cricket for Notts and the MCC [look him up in 'Legends of Cricket'] and had had a pretty good career as an amateur boxer.

 

I was 'Dolly Baehr' (as in 'Do try harder Dolly Baehr')

 

If he thought I'd been smoking (particularly during boxing season) or I wasn't reaching his expected standards of fitness, he didn't beat me, or give me a formal punishment.

 

"We're going to do some sparring today, Dolly Baehr - and you know why!"

 

Far worse than the cane.:hihi:

 

just by pass this post waaaay! too long to read!

[joiner andy]

My mum was a teacher. Some teachers throw chalk. She threw board rubbers.

 

And she never missed.

 

I was about 25. I was home on leave. I can't remember why, but I needed totalk to my mother about something, so I went to her school, went to the classroom, knocked and waited until she said: "Come in!"

 

(That wasn't just 'being polite' - That was being wise.)

 

I went over to her desk, said what I wanted to say and then she reached up and grabbed the hair in front of my ear and twisted it downwards.

 

That does make your eyes water!!

 

She brought me to my knees (quite literally!) - and my eyes were watering quite obviously.

 

Then she said: "Don't say anything!" and let go. I got up, said goodbye and left.

 

As I left the classroom she said to the kids (who were very, very quiet) : "That man is my son. He's far bigger than any of you lot. If I can do that to him, just imagine what I could do to you?"

 

Apparently, that class behaved impeccably for the rest of the year.

 

still too long!!!

[Rupert_Baehr]

It's called ADD.

 

Try Ritalin.

 

I don't care whether you can read it or not.

 

Have you tried 'The Beano' ?