Book of the Month: Life in a Secondary Modern School

In the early 1960s John Partridge taught at a secondary modern school in the Midlands region of England. At that time children took exams at the age of 11 and their result decided whether they were eligible to attend grammar schools which offered pupils an intensive academic education or be one of the two-thirds of children who went to a secondary mod. which did not.

Partridge wrote a book about the school he taught at which among other things highlighted the general use of corporal punishment. Here are some extracts from the book.

The school’s Headmaster has a small compact office; behind the door there is a tall cupboard and it is on top of this that the Headmaster keeps his cane. This cane, that is feared throughout the school, is short rather like a riding crop, being about eighteen inches long and about half an inch in diameter.

When a culprit arrives at the Headmaster’s door, after having been sent there by someone else, or summoned by the Headmaster himself, he is invited in; the boy may then explain why he has been sent, or make excuses for a known misdemeanour; if the excuses are unacceptable, as they usually are, these will be dismissed with the briefest of words; the Headmaster will quickly move across to the door just inside of which the boy is probably standing; he reaches for his cane on top of the cupboard with one hand and pulls the boy into position with the other; he grips the boy firmly round the wrist and strikes him across the hand twice; four times or six times according to the seriousness of the crime.

This ceremony has been witnessed by individual teachers, and can always be seen by any boys on the first stairway inside the main classroom block.

….

The ultimate deterrent of a caning by the Headmaster is not over frequently employed, otherwise of course it would become meaningless. This punishment is reserved for serious offences, or where a boy is beyond the control of a particular teacher – this does not seem to happen very often. Any boy caught stealing or pilfering will inevitably be punished in this way, sometimes as much to impress the police or other parents, if it is an external theft, as to chastise the particular boy.

Boys caught smoking, or damaging school property, or boys breaking other rules by hanging around the premises after school without permission or repeatedly bullying are likely to be caned by the Headmaster. On occasions boys may be caned by the Headmaster merely for the sake of making an example of someone, as when a boy is sent out of morning assembly for talking.

In certain circumstances a boy may be sent to the Headmaster by a teacher, who for one reason or another is unable to manage the boy, or wishes to give the rest of the class a salutary warning; this happen infrequently but when it does the Head will uphold the teacher’s authority and expectations by caning the boy.

…

 

The headmaster and his deputy may use a cane, but other members of the staff are only permitted to use a ‘whacker’; for the uninitiated, a whacker is a piece of wood used to belabour boys’ backsides.

A teacher, so the story goes, turns these pieces of wood on a lathe. A typical whacker is a round-edged piece of wood about two feet long and with grooves carved at one end as a handle. Certainly many of the teachers possess these and they can be found in odd corners of the various classroom – at the side of the teacher’s desk, on the window sill, over the blackboard, in the store room.

Some whackers are shared between two or three teachers, so that, when a teacher decides a particular boy or class need subduing, he sends for the whacker from a colleague. Sharing a whacker has the advantage of scaring the boys without actually having to use it; to send a boy out of the class to fetch a whacker has a salutary effect on the boy and the whole class, so that when he returns with the whacker in his hand, both the boy and his classmates may be sufficiently awed to make further action unnecessary.

Further, when a boy comes into the classroom and tells the teacher that Mr X would like the whacker, this may have some disciplinary impact upon the class hearing this request.

The prescribed way of using the whacker is to give the culprit one or two sharp strokes across the behind. It is considered that to do this with such a flat piece of wood hurts the boy in the instant, but that this soon wears off and leaves no prolonged bruise. It is thought important to avoid unduly hurting and marking the child, because this may make for complications and rows with certain parents; one head of department jested with a subordinate member of staff that he should avoid whacking the boys on Fridays because this was ‘bath night’ locally and many Mums and Dads might see the telltale marks on the little boys’ backsides in the bath.

That this is the prescribed way for the staff to administer corporal punishment in this School does not imply that all the teachers use this method. Most teachers have and use a whacker, but some strike boys across the hand rather than across the behind. One teacher, for instance, has a long, broad, and thin whacker, and this he uses to give various miscreants quick sharp whacks across the palm of the hand, administering up to twenty or twenty-five such strokes to one culprit.

Another young teacher tried to punish a boy by making him stand with his arms extended and holding a stone in each hand; this incident was probably an experiment and not a general practice with this particular teacher.

From being given general licence to strike boys across their behinds, it is no great step to assume that other kinds of physical violence are permissible. Thus some members of this staff are wont to use their hands in various ways, a prompt cuff across the ear being common. Boys may be banged across the head with a book or struck across the knuckles with a ruler. One fourth-year boy [aged about 14], for example, was behaving rather stupidly while waiting outside a classroom; a senior member of staff came up behind him and hit him severely across the face from behind. This rocked the boy on his heels and the general hubbub was immediately hushed and order restored.

Most of the whacking, clouting and smacking that goes on in the school cannot be called brutal or sadistic.

Life in a Secondary Modern School, by John Partridge (Pelican: 1968).

 

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