Corporal punishment at school/The Black Book

[String o' beads]

tilly wrote: It might have been harsh at that time but i dont ever remember any youths kicking and beating an old person.Or going about in gangs looking for trouble.I dont remember youths with knifes or anyone stomping on someones head.If two men had a fight i dont remember when one went down the other putting the boot in i could be wrong but this is how i saw it when i was kid it might have taken place but i never saw or heard of it. If it did take place it would have been the exception rather than the rule.To say that the cane caused children to be brutal in later life to me is a load of rubbish or that to smack a child will damage it for the rest of its life in my mind is rubbish.I have had both and have never been in trouble all my life in fact it has made me the person i am today.Would i have the same childhood again you bet i would. The fact is that we live in the least violent times in history. Just going back to the fifties, teddy boys would routinely carry flick knives and get into fights - that's just one example. Go back a little further in history and you could literally get away with murder. Cardiarms's right to point out that we have more access to what's going on these days so it might seem more. I was hoping this wouldn't become a 'it never did me any harm' thread, but if you really think about it, the message that corporal punishment sends is that big people in authority can get away with hitting smaller people. Would they hit someone their own size who'd cheeked them or otherwise transgressed? If not, why not, if that's a good way to give someone a lesson? I'm no fan of leniency however, and I do think that too many parents buy stuff rather than spend time with their children these days, but if you have to hit someone smaller than yourself to impose discipline then you've failed, imho. Any caring adult with half a brain should be able to think of a better way. There is some merit in the argument that it's gone too far the other way, I will own; teachers must be given authority to impose appropriate penalties. But abolishing corporal punishment was absolutely the right thing to do. We are not barbarians. To get back to the black book, I wouldn't be surprised if they were quietly disposed of. They are shameful things. Oh, and that scene in Kes. I was in tears for that little boy who'd just brought a message. I know, I know, it's only a film!     

[blackprince]

stutterdog wrote: Spackler wrote: Never had a book at my primary but there were certainly pointless punishments. Our vicious old lady teacher meted out smackings at the front of class and assembly. Can remember all the red hand marks across our backsides. I got it several times and cant remember ever doing anything wrong. Clearly she got a great deal of enjoyment out of it in some way. At the end of this thread I did ask if anyone knew what happened to the Black books.I thought there might be someone who had some idea? Perhaps they were all destroyed as they contained definite proof that violence was dished out and the Leeds Eucation Dept. could have been sued if the contents had been allowed to come out in the open! I must admit that there were lot's of incidences of unrecorded violence by most teachers at my school.It would hang over you like a dark cloud in some classes who's teachers were prone to lashing out at any pupil who did the slightest misdemeanor. Recently I was trying to find out if there were any photos in the Archives of Brownhill School - sadly not but the archives in Chapeltown did have the punishment books.

[Chrism]

re Geordie Exile here " I was hoping this wouldn't become a 'it never did me any harm' thread, but if you really think about it, the message that corporal punishment sends is that big people in authority can get away with hitting smaller people. Would they hit someone their own size who'd cheeked them or otherwise transgressed? If not, why not, if that's a good way to give someone a lesson? "In 1972 a boy joined our school from St Benedicts, he'd been expelled from there. I won't mention his name but I don't really see why I shouldn't, nothing I'm saying is false. Anyway, he was a very big youth, about 6'2" and this geezer could grow a beard. 14 years old and he was shaving daily. We knew a pub that we could get served in and used it regularly, The Oak at the bottom of the jail road. We went there one dinner time and had 2 or 3 halves of bitter and went back to school, Ian had a bit of a to-do with someone and was sent to the head. The head told him 6 of the best was being given and Ian told him that if he lifted the cane he would give him the 6. He walked out of the heads office and back into class and told us all this. The head did nothing, he had been stood up to and bottled it. Just because most of us were smaller he ruled. Not with Ian he didn't. After that some other kids just refused to be hit with a cane, piece of wood, slipper, etc etc etc and sometimes the blackboard rubber got thrown back. We made a stand against getting hit by grown men with weapons, and it worked for us. Still today I refuse to let my gaffer or anyone in authority shout at me or call me down, why should they? If they do I don't respond, I don't shout at them nor call them. Respect.

[Chrism]

http://www.deanesfield.connectfree.co.u ... ge13.phtml

[String o' beads]

That was good to read Chrism, thanks. It illustrates my point nicely.There seems to be a culture now of 'you have to earn respect'. That's nonsense, imho, and a glass half empty approach. I always automatically respect people I encounter unless they give me reason not to.    

[chameleon]

Chrism wrote: re Geordie Exile here " I was hoping this wouldn't become a 'it never did me any harm' thread, but if you really think about it, the message that corporal punishment sends is that big people in authority can get away with hitting smaller people. Would they hit someone their own size who'd cheeked them or otherwise transgressed? If not, why not, if that's a good way to give someone a lesson? "In 1972 a boy joined our school from St Benedicts, he'd been expelled from there. I won't mention his name but I don't really see why I shouldn't, nothing I'm saying is false. Anyway, he was a very big youth, about 6'2" and this geezer could grow a beard. 14 years old and he was shaving daily. We knew a pub that we could get served in and used it regularly, The Oak at the bottom of the jail road. We went there one dinner time and had 2 or 3 halves of bitter and went back to school, Ian had a bit of a to-do with someone and was sent to the head. The head told him 6 of the best was being given and Ian told him that if he lifted the cane he would give him the 6. He walked out of the heads office and back into class and told us all this. The head did nothing, he had been stood up to and bottled it. Just because most of us were smaller he ruled. Not with Ian he didn't. After that some other kids just refused to be hit with a cane, piece of wood, slipper, etc etc etc and sometimes the blackboard rubber got thrown back. We made a stand against getting hit by grown men with weapons, and it worked for us. Still today I refuse to let my gaffer or anyone in authority shout at me or call me down, why should they? If they do I don't respond, I don't shout at them nor call them. Respect. I think you make the point which a lot of people would recognise there Chris. It really is worrying to think how much injustice could be dished out just because they were 'bigger' back then, as you say, to gain respect. Not all teachers were like that though were they? Agood number of ours used more traditional methods to command respect - they gave it to us and it worked. I remain in passing contact with some of them even today,Similarly, what ever other thoughts I may have about the profession, I don't envy anyone the task of maintianing discipline and respect these days - things have gone too far the other way and even parents must be wary of any form of punishment they feel is needed for their offspring.There were three members of one Department at school who simply would not be allowed to teach in todays regime ( If they were, I wouldn't fancy their survival chances against some of today's mentality). I am surprised not to have seen any reports of action taken against them during all these years given some of the behaviours they displayed towards some pupilsI'm glad my family is long past that stage and that we don't have to negotiate any of these regimes for them. SAd really that we can be left feeling like that.

[Crazy Jane]

" I am surprised not to have seen any reports of action taken against them during all these years given some of the behaviours they displayed towards some pupilsDissapointed"There was a class teacher i will not name at Smeaton Middle school cira 1978 who seemed to enjoy hitting boys with the ruler a bit too much. Over his knee of course. One of the boys seemed to like winding him up, so the teacher rulered him so often that after a while he decided that every time he did the boy he'd use an extra ruler, so he did 2 rulers, then 3 and so on. By the end of the year he used to have to have a whip round of the class for 20something rulers.I'm sure these days you could go to jail for that, or at least get screwed in the news of the world, or both.He was a replacement actually for a bats__t polish teacher we started the year with, neurotic and painfully middle class and would hit the roof if you called a toilet roll a bog roll. She left after a lad assaulted her, which i'm not defending one little bit, but she was really dumb to have lost her rag and manhandled him over not much. I don't even know if he actually meant to assault her, or if he was just so uterly s__t scared he started lashing out

[chameleon]

Crazy Jane wrote: " I am surprised not to have seen any reports of action taken against them during all these years given some of the behaviours they displayed towards some pupilsDissapointed"There was a class teacher i will not name at Smeaton Middle school cira 1978 who seemed to enjoy hitting boys with the ruler a bit too much. Over his knee of course. One of the boys seemed to like winding him up, so the teacher rulered him so often that after a while he decided that every time he did the boy he'd use an extra ruler, so he did 2 rulers, then 3 and so on. By the end of the year he used to have to have a whip round of the class for 20something rulers.I'm sure these days you could go to jail for that, or at least get screwed in the news of the world, or both.He was a replacement actually for a bats__t polish teacher we started the year with, neurotic and painfully middle class and would hit the roof if you called a toilet roll a bog roll. She left after a lad assaulted her, which i'm not defending one little bit, but she was really dumb to have lost her rag and manhandled him over not much. I don't even know if he actually meant to assault her, or if he was just so uterly s__t scared he started lashing out Sounds as though he just needed the whip rather than going round the class Jane Many staff left Foxwood for Smeaton when it opened having become dissolusioned but I think that feeling seemed to follow them there after a while.

[Si]

Geordie-exile wrote: There seems to be a culture now of 'you have to earn respect'. That's nonsense, imho, and a glass half empty approach. I always automatically respect people I encounter unless they give me reason not to.     Quite right, Geordie-Exile. There is a tendency to confuse "respect" with "fear" these days, for example, youths intimidating people "to gain respsect."

[pyramar]

I went to a Leeds primary school where one teacher literally beat boys every day of his working life by a variety of implements including a cane, the slipper and his hand. I have one other teacher there to thank for instilling in me a high degree of cynacism over religion since he began any slippering with the words 'for what you are about to receive, may the lord make you truly thankful'. At Grammar School, by far the majority of teachers never touched a child in their lives, but one day in Physics, the teacher told all the boys to be quiet until the bell went at the end of lesson and if anyone moved they were 'for it'. You cannot expect a group of 30 boys to be silent and inevitably someone pushed someone else or made someone laugh and one boy (who i shall not name) was subject to the most ferocious beating. He was absent the next day. And the one after. And the rest of term. I heard from him later that he'd had a breakdown and when he did finally return to school it was in the year below. What made the story even more tragic was that this boy was a carer for his two disabled parents. He was never a bad lad. Although he went to grammar school he ended up in a manual job. I coulnt help thinking if his beating was something to do with slowing down his potential. CP was simply child abuse. With reference to the 'bring back cp and they never come back for more' school of thought I remember seeing an interview with one of Kray gang who said he was the last person in Britain to be legally given the cat of nine tails as a young man in the late 40s/early 50s. Far from turning him away from crime he went on to be one of the most feared in a fearsome gang.