Nine in ten schoolboys vote for caning: news report
Nine in ten schoolboys said they would prefer to be caned than write lines or do a detention, in a survey reported by the editor of the Leicester Evening Mail in 1952.
When the faithful House of Commons have time to get round to it they are going to discuss a Bill which should cause a tremor in the tomb of old Dr. Keate.
Dr.
Keate was an Eton headmaster in Victoria’s day who set up
an all-time record by flogging as many as 80 boys on one of the hottest of
summer days.
He believed in corporal punishment as an essential
part of school training, and you can imagine how he would have received the
news of the Private Member’s Bill which Mr. Peter Freeman is presenting to the
Commons – a Bill which, if it becomes law, will make it a punishable offence
for teachers in British schools to punish offences with the cane.
And what do teachers think?
A recent survey conducted by the National Federation
for Education showed that of 724 teachers questioned on caning 89.2 percent
favoured it “as a last resort”.
Less than 6 percent held the view that all forms of
physical punishment should be abandoned.
PREFERRED
Another public-opinion poll has been carried out among
those who might find themselves at the receiving end.
A questionnaire on caning was addressed to 2,628
children of ages ranging from eight to sixteen and drawn from seven different
types of schools.
Asked which they would prefer:
1) Two
strokes with the cane,
2) Five
hundred lines to be done at home,
3) A
half-day’s detention in school,
90 percent of the boys plumped for the cane.
But of the girls 63 percent preferred 2) or 3).
So this old controversy looks like cropping up again
and all I can contribute to it is the testimony that the one caning I got at
school is about the only incident of my school life I can clearly remember, and
that the offence for which I was caned I have never repeated.
Yes, I was permanently cured of a desire to put sand in
inkwells.
As
published in the Leicester Evening Mail, 21 March 1952.
Picture credit: Kernled.
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