‘Boys don’t care if they get the cane’

Schoolboys do not care whether they are caned or not. It is merely one of the customs of Authority and they accept it, a teacher wrote in a letter to a UK national newspaper in 1961.

Spare us the

rod – it spoils

the argument

It is foolish for M.Ps. debating whether or not there should be corporal punishment for young offenders, to recall the canings of their schooldays as evidence.

Schoolboys do not care whether they are caned or not. It is merely one of the customs of Authority and they accept it.

The characters of a few – a very few – may be affected by it, but no more than by the sadistic sarcasm of teachers at a no-caning school.

Discipline is unaffected. A teacher who cannot keep order without a cane cannot keep order with one.

And all this has nothing to do with the argument against corporal punishment imposed by the law, which is a form of judicial torture.

TEACHER,

WIMBLEDON, LONDON

As published in the Daily Herald, 14 February 1961

Picture credit: ClubLads

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