Headmaster calls for firm laws to allow him to cane boys

Should schoolboys be caned? Spoiler alert! Mr. Charles Anson-Smith, headmaster of Rushey Mead boys’ school, Leicester, is in favour – he tells his local newspaper in 1954.

LET’S KEEP

THE CANE!

SHOULD we keep the cane? Every school has its small percentage of boys who resist authority and try to wrest power from the teacher. They are boys who will not respond to any of the usual correctives.

You may attempt to reason with them, keep them in after school, or give them impositions, but to no avail. All that they understand is the fear of the cane. This, by the way, is a phenomenon as old as history, and if it were confined to schools we should not need police.

How is a teacher to deal with this rebellious minority whose high-spirited pranks influence other boys and threaten to turn a well-behaved class into an unruly mob.

In my opinion he should dispense justice swiftly and firmly. When all else has failed he should cane them.

Unfortunately the teacher is not always free to mete out justice as he thinks fit. Corporal punishment, and even some milder correctives, are forbidden in London County Council schools. The result, I hear, is chaos.

In other schools, the teacher who canes a boy risks a lawsuit being brought by indignant parents. And if such a case goes against him he stands to lose both his job and his pension.

It is surely not surprising that many schoolmasters are now reluctant to discipline even the most troublesome pupil. They ask: “Why should I risk my livelihood for somebody else’s child?”

No teacher who is worth his salt will cane a boy unless he sincerely believes it necessary. It is a distasteful task. That is why the outcry against any form of corporal punishment in schools is so wrong-headed.

Too Much Publicity

Teachers love children, otherwise they would not be teachers. They have trained for their job and they should be allowed to get on with it without the constant fear of reprisal hanging over them.

What passes for public opinion seems to be against corporal punishment, but this is questionable.

Judging by the number of parents who actually ask me to discipline their children, I prefer to think that the anti-caning agitators have merely been given too much publicity.

What does defeat teachers is the obscurity of the law. The schoolmaster who canes a boy can never be certain that the local Bench of magistrates will agree that he was justified. So widespread is this uncertainty that even parents are doubtful how far they may go in punishing their own children.

If we are not to run into serious trouble in later years this state of affairs must be ended. I will agree that hard and fast laws in this matter are difficult to frame. There must be safeguards against abuses both in the home and the schools.

But I believe the law could be defined clearly enough to relieve the teaching profession of this great burden of doubt which is hampering them in their task of turning out fit citizens.

Sparing the rod will not soil most children. But there are some whom a helping at the right moment will greatly benefit.

As published in the Illustrated Leicester Chronicle, 13 November 1954.

Picture credit: Darrien.

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