Headmaster videotaped his canings as ‘an experiment’

There was uproar when 25 boys were videotaped in a “caning experiment” at Rongotai College, in Wellington. The principal, Noel Mackay, said it was “to see why experienced teachers often miss the target and leave boys with embarrassing marks on their lower buttocks”. – Corporal punishment was legal in New Zealand schools until 1990, Jessica Long looks back

It was the middle of the Depression, and many children had no shoes. Even in winter they came to school in bare feet, and first thing in the morning the whole class would be sent running across the playground’s frozen grass.

The teacher said it was “to warm you up” but the last one back got the strap, The Dominion Sunday Times reported in August 1990 – a month after Parliament voted to ban corporal punishment in schools.

The headmaster was a tall, stooped, dyspeptic-looking man, who always wore a sour expression. He gave the impression that he hated children and carried his strap in his hand as he went about his business. He flogged children on the spot for trivial offences such as dropping a lolly paper.

Mr Woodhead, another teacher came close to being a sadist, Maurice Jenner told the paper.

He had two straps, a thick one that hung on a nail at the end of his desk, and a thin one that he kept in a tin of vinegar in his drawer. He said that kept it supple.

Woodhead strapped people most days for many things unrelated to discipline.

There were 10 teachers at that school. Eight of them used the strap most days, and the other two sent children to another teacher to be punished. Boys were more likely to be hit than girls.

Resentment set in at a Christchurch school in 1906 when a teacher, who regularly beat children during spelling test, was “pelted with inkwells and slates and rushed and downed”, an ex-student recalls on the history website Te Ara.

From the 1950s some parents and teachers argued that corporal punishment should be banned in schools. Pressure really began to mount in the 1980s but the “swishing” was still considered essential to maintain discipline in schools.

“The age-old punishment of a cane swishing – or fluttering – against a serge-covered posterior still creates just as much dissension among the ranks of those concerned with education as it ever did,” The Evening Post reported in October 1981.

The report followed uproar when 25 boys were videotaped in a “caning experiment” at Rongotai College, in Wellington.

The principal, Noel Mackay, said it was “to see why experienced teachers often miss the target and leave boys with embarrassing marks on their lower buttocks”, the Post reported.

The 65-year-old principal told reporters the students who were due to be caned had given their consent for the experiment, which ran over three weeks.

By playing the videotape back in slow motion, he could follow the movement of the cane. He pointed to his experience as an aeronautics engineer and said he was accustomed to experiments of wind-tunnel movements and natural forces.

“The film showed that, if the cane was too flexible, or used with too much vigour, it tended to flutter up and down – and that’s when a miss occurred,” Mackay told the Post.

“As you realise, I don’t normally miss, so I had to do 20 or 30 different boys to see what the difference was between the canes.”

Several parents phoned the Post to complain the video tests were a “violation of their sons’ right”.

Mackay offered to resign after inquiries into the incident, but said the two were not connected. He was censured by the board for videotaping canings but there were no formal proceedings. Most students and parents supported his actions.

Corporal punishment was abolished in 1987 but it wasn’t until July 1990 that the legislation passed.

Extracted from the Stuff website, 29 September 2018.

Picture credit, CP Services, London

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