How might a secondary school headmaster from a generation ago react to the situation in today's British schools, particularly as regards the demise of corporal punishment? Let us imagine that such a gentleman has stepped into a time machine and found himself stranded in today's climate of political correctness and 'child-centered' education...

MY PHILOSOPHY OF PUNISHMENT

I have been reading the newspapers, and despite periodic calls for the return of corporal punishment - and specifically the cane - to British schools, this seems to be a lost cause. What always upsets me is the use of the emotive and loaded terms 'assault' and 'abuse' to describe what in my time was regarded as a common sense approach to the punishment of schoolboy misbehaviour.

Before today's trendy theories took hold, the cane sat at the apex of the disciplinary system in the majority of well run English schools. The most important thing about corporal punishment was that this sanction was feared. The cane is a most efficient instrument of correction which can inflict a very unpleasant degree of pain, yet will cause no lasting injury. Once a boy has been caned, he will fear a repetition of the experience and thus the cane also acts as a deterrent to wrongdoing.

What sanctions do today's schools employ in place of the cane? There is the time honoured punishment of detention, and the average pupil certainly dislikes being placed 'in clink' (schoolboy slang for the punishment in my own school). But nowadays the most serious consequence of misconduct appears to be suspension, a sanction which was almost unheard of in my day. If a boy is a persistent rulebreaker it seems ridiculous to allow him an extra holiday from school as a reward! To use another schoolboy slang term, 'a swishing' would be a far more appropriate punishment: decidedly unpleasant (and therefore to be feared) and yet over and done with very quickly, after which the miscreant can be reintegrated into the school community.

'But beating a boy across his backside with a stick never solves anything' the progressive educationalist may protest. I would answer that a caning serves two purposes. First of all the boy is punished for his wrongdoing in a way which makes him suffer. He is not sent home on holiday! And secondly, once the caning is over and done with and the slate is wiped clean the lingering memory of the red hot pain in his backside will act as a deterrent against future misconduct. If a punishment is not disliked and feared it is worse than useless.

WHEN TO CANE

As a headmaster I always thought it important that a certain gravitas should be attached to the cane. Since corporal punishment was reserved for the worst misconduct I believed that there should be a degree of ritual attached. Thus a boy whose behaviour merited the cane first of all received a 'Corporal Punishment Chit' from his form master. This was a green coloured slip of paper which informed him that he was to report to the headmaster a couple of days hence to explain his misconduct and receive corporal punishment. Although the school did not inform a boy's parents at this stage, canings were always noted on the end of term report, so no doubt recipients of corporal punishment had some explaining to do at home later on.

Keeping a boy waiting for a day or two was an essential part of the punishment. If the boy had never been caned before, he was likely to be full of trepidation, wondering just how much it would hurt. On the other hand, a boy who had been caned before knew just how unpleasant the punishment was, so he also had good reason to be racked with nerves.

I always caned boys directly after morning prayers and made a point of reading out their names during the assembly. 'So and so will please see me afterwards' I would intone. I didn't need to add 'for well deserved corporal punishment' since everyone present knew that was part of the equation.

On some mornings only one boy would be waiting outside my study, but on other occasions the caning list might include as many as half a dozen wrongdoers. I always summoned the miscreants in alphabetical order of their surnames. I would lay the punishment cane on my desk, in clear view of the boy, and bid him stand before me at attention whilst I noted his faults and enquired if he could offer me any reason why I should not thrash him. Of course, I was very familiar with all the normal schoolboy excuses and never let a boy off his caning, however much he might plead or offer me heartfelt promises of future good behaviour.

HOW TO CANE

In all my years as a headmaster I never received the slightest trouble from a boy who was undergoing corporal punishment. Nowadays I imagine a lad might offer me plenty of reasons why he should not be caned, and then march defiantly out of the room. He might even throw a punch at the schoolmaster on the way! But in my time, a juvenile knew his place in the scheme of things and acknowledged that if he did wrong and was caught out he deserved to be punished. So however disagreeable the caning might be (and I always ensured that it was very disagreeable) a schoolboy invariably submitted to my superior authority and meekly accepted his punishment.

If I was dealing with a first offender I might limit the punishment to three or four strokes. But on most other occcasions, since I wished the caning to have a lasting deterrent effect, I normally gave an old-fashioned six of the best, well laid on. I never made a boy 'touch his toes' but always positioned him over a sturdy armchair with his backside pushed well out to provide a tight trouser seat. That way the lad had plenty of support and could concentrate on the business in hand without worrying about falling over.

I must confess that I was whacked a number of times in my own schooldays and was always surprised just how much a vigorously applied cane could sting, even through the thick flannel shorts we wore in those days. A skilled practitioner was adept at making use of the natural springiness of the rattan to increase the speed and impact, producing a burning pain which even the hardiest schoolboy would find extremely disagreeable. Incidentally, with the advent of lighter weight worsted and terylene school trousers in the 1950s and 1960s the sting quotient must have risen somewhat!

I would ask the reader to imagine himself in the place of a schoolboy who has just suffered a first forceful cut of the cane. Your backside feels as though it has been lashed by a red hot wire and yet you know that there are as many as five more such searing strokes to come. I can guarantee that once six of the best has been laid on you will feel as though you've been to hell and back.

AFTER THE CANING

Once the punishment was concluded I always gave the boy time to compose himself (there were often tears) and then informed him that as far as I was concerned the slate was wiped clean and he could make a fresh start. I also opined that I hoped never to see him before me for the cane again. I can testify from long experience that in nearly every case corporal punishment proved effective. Of course, certain badly behaved boys did receive more than their fair share of canings, but I am sure that without the ultimate sanction of corporal punishment their behaviour would have been very much worse. In modern parlance, such boys would nowadays be considered 'out of control' and following repeated suspensions would be expelled to an intensively staffed and extremely expensive 'special unit'. I am proud to say that I never once had occasion to expel a boy and employed suspension extremely rarely.

What conclusions can be drawn from this comparison of past and present? I would be the first to admit that you cannot bring back the past; however, one can learn from past mistakes. In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with hierarchy and authority in a educational environment, since before proper learning can take place there must be a modicum of discipline and order. The alternative is anarchy. Woolly thinking has led to the abandonment of one of the most useful tools in the maintenance of that vital discipline and order - the cane - and one only has to survey the appalling situation in many British schools to realise that not all progress is for the better.

NOTE

In my day corporal punishment in schools was such an accepted fact of life that we could also see the funny side. Both masters and pupils greatly enjoyed the antics of madcap headmaster Jimmy Edwards of Chislebury School in the TV series Whacko. Here is a still from the amusing film based on the TV programme which is not unlike the scenario in my own study following morning assembly, as described above, although I would have considerately provided an armchair for the boy to bend over!