School brings back the cane

 In 1978 Skegby Hall school an Approved school for young offenders in the English Midlands reintroduced the cane after a two-year absence.

An approved school was a type of residential institution where young people could be sent by a court, usually for committing offences but sometimes because they were deemed to be beyond parental control. They were modelled on ordinary boarding schools, and it was relatively easy to leave without permission. This set approved schools apart from borstals, a tougher and more enclosed kind of youth prison.

Regional TV station ATV reported from Skegby Hall, Sutton in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire. Headmaster George Lincoln said the cane was an effective tool. “My colleagues in ordinary schools who have in the main what might be described as ‘normal children’ do have the right and the authority [to cane] and many of them do exercise it.” He asks why should he be barred from using corporal punishment?

The extract below begins with a stilted reconstruction of boy being caned. We see two boys waiting outside the headmaster’s office. One goes inside and from his point of view he is talked to by the headmaster and then receives the cane. We cut to the boy waiting outside who winces at the noise.

Later the headmaster is asked for what types of offence he would use the cane. “The one that readily springs to mind is bullying, acts of vicious bullying, because most bullies are by nature cowards anyway and it is, I think, a very effective deterrent to would-be bullies and also it stops further bullying,” he replies.

Some children are interviewed about their views on the use of the cane: some are for it, others against.

A longer version of this clip is online here.

Picture and video credit: ATV via The Media Archive for Central England (MACE)

For more TV News and Documentary, click here

Traditional School Discipline

Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com