Row over public canings in schools

 

A row blew up in 1980 when a local authority in England tried to rule that pupils could not be caned in front of their classmates if headmasters thought this was more effective than doing it in private.

At issue wasn’t about ritualized beatings taking place in front of the whole school assembled for that purpose. Instead, it involved corporal punishment dished out at the time that offences were committed in lessons. The boy (almost always it was boy and not a girl) might be called out in front of the class and caned.

In 1980, Humberside Council in northern England issued new regulations on the use of corporal punishment which did not allow punishment to be administered in front of other children. The first of the newspaper cutting below reports members of the council disagreed about the plan.

Eventually, as the second cutting reports, the council agreed that public canings could go ahead. STOPP (the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment), the most vocal anti-corporal punishment lobby in England in the 1980s, quickly weighed in calling the decision ‘almost incredible callousness.’

Public caning was not confined to Humberside. The third cutting from 1981 is about a school in the English Midlands that was forced to deny that public canings took place after an accusation made by STOPP.

As published in the Daily Mail (Hull), 16 February 1980

As published in the Daily Post (Liverpool), 8 April 1980

As published in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, 19 May 1981

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

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