Father urges pupils to refuse the cane
In 1977 a father had 15,00 cards printed saying , “I refuse to allow you to cane me” so children could hand them to their teachers if they were about to be beaten.
Hundreds of children in Barnsley,
Yorkshire, were handed cards yesterday urging them not to accept the cane from
teachers. The move, marks the latest stage in a campaign by a local parent, Ronald
Burton, against corporal punishment in schools.
Mr Burton, aged 53, of Harington
Drive, has had 15,000 cards printed which he advises children to show to
teachers before being caned.
They say: “Dear teacher, I
refuse to allow you to cane me as I consider the stick is a form of torture. It
harms me and makes a bully of you. Instead, please report my alleged offence to
my parents.”
In April this year Mr
Burton brought a private prosecution before Barnsley magistrates against the senior
master at Honeywell Comprehensive school Mr Douglas Kruse. Mr Burton claimed
that Mr Kruse had assaulted his12-year-old son Geoffrey by giving him two
strokes of the cane across his buttocks. The magistrates, however, found there
was no case to answer.
Mr Burton said yesterday: “The
barrier I am trying to break down is that teachers claim that in caning
children they are acting in loco parentis. Caning goes far beyond the severity
of any punishment which a reasonable parent would give. In fact were a parent
to inflict the injuries on a child which occur in the average school caning he
would be in peril of prosecution. This leaflet is aimed to draw parents’
attention to this anomaly through their children.”
Meanwhile Mr Burton’s two
sons Mark and Geoffrey have been transferred from Honeywell Comprehensive
school; where teachers refused to teach them following his court action, to the
town’s St Helens’ school. He said: “One of the difficulties I have had
throughout has been that magistrates and police in Barnsley have been
antagonistic towards me. The police who made the initial investigation into the
caning and took photographs of scars on my son’s buttocks dropped the case
without giving me a reason. However, I now have copies of their confidential
file and it shows that they labelled me as a trouble-maker who wanted to take
action, only because there was an article about caning in the local paper on
the day Geoffrey was caned.”
A spokesman for the
National Association of Schoolmasters in Barnsley said the cards would make no
difference if a teacher decided to cane a child. “But we do try as far as
possible to take parental views on the subject into account,” he said.
As published in the Guardian, 7 Jul 1977
Picture credit: The Hotspur.
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