Cane in English schools

[Aspergers_Aspie]

On UK tv show countdown Nick Hewer referring to the cane in schools said 'we all turned out okay'. Do people on this forum think the cane in schools in England should have been kept or not?

 

[Raggamuffin]

In this day and age it would never be able to continue. People get upset over the slightest inconveniences - let alone having your child come home, bruised and traumatised after a teacher hit them.

Ed

 

[Progster]

No. There is no place for the cane in schools, at least not in this century. It was responsible for a lot of psychological trauma, PTSD and other mental health issues, and kids with ADHD, autism and dyslexia and learning difficulties were often unfairly punished in this way. Learning should be a pleasant experience, not a traumatic one. Classrooms need to be managed, but corporal punishment is not the right way to go about it.

 

[Mia]

The nuns used a strap or hit you on the hands or the head with a pointer or ruler, that was elementary school. Went to school most days slightly fearful, until high school where corporal punishment was no longer permitted. It's not a good learning environment when everything you do is instilled with trepidation and fear of doing the wrong thing but your not exactly certain what that 'wrong thing' is. Because no one told you.

Some of those punishments were for talking out of turn, getting an answer wrong more than once, not completing homework, passing notes, and not repeating back what the teacher recited for you to memorize.

 

[Judge]

Given a heightened understanding of general liability, corporal punishment in schools and outside one's immediate family doesn't sound like a realistic concept in this day and age.

More just a relic of the past with those of us who recall administrators, educators and nuns beating guilty and innocent children.

Wasn't Winston Churchill routinely and brutally flogged by his headmaster as a young boy?

 

[GrownupGirl]

I think it's barbaric. I read Roald Dahl's autobiography where he went to a boarding school as a child, and he described the experience of being caned very vividly, and it was both horrifying and amazing. He said that after so many smacks the pain didn't get any worse, it just prolonged it, and then when the headmaster finally said "you may go", it sounded like it came from a cave a hundred miles away and you'd hurry out the door clutching your bottom while walking on your toes. Also the kids were caned for the trivial reasons. It was wrong for them to make mistakes or even be kids.

When adults say they turned out okay from being physically beaten as punishment as kids, they either turned out okay in spite of it, or they're delusional and they're not okay at all.

 

[menander]

Whenever someone says, "We turned out OK....." Well, we don't have to believe them. Agree with @GrownupGirl

 

[Nervous Rex]

I recently read this statement:

You say you turned out okay, but the fact that you want it to happen to others means you did not, in fact, turn out okay.

 

[Gift2humanity]

On UK tv show countdown Nick Hewer referring to the cane in schools said 'we all turned out okay'. Do people on this forum think the cane in schools in England should have been kept or not?

I don't agree with violence, physical discipline is violence and teaches fear.
I got caned by a teacher for turning round in class, she was vulnerable herself, could not control the class and saw me as a target

 

[SDRSpark]

The school I graduated from in 2006 (rural US) still used corporal punishment...or said they did...though I never saw it. They sent home a consent form for my mother to sign (literally a "may we hit your child" form). My mom asked if she could sign it. I said yes. We laughed hysterically (knowing it probably wouldn't happen but also, knowing that if they tried, I'd probably deck them.)

Anyone who says "I was spanked as a child and I turned out fine" and uses that as justification for hitting children...did not turn out fine, they turned out to be someone who thinks that hitting children is a good thing. That's not fine at all.

I'm one of those who was hit as a child and definitely did not turn out fine. People confuse fear and respect...once a person gives me a reason to fear them, though, I lose all respect for them. I don't respect people who make me feel afraid. I don't know why people think fear and intimidation is such a good thing.

It doesn't teach anyone to do the right thing, it just teaches them not to get caught doing the wrong thing. They still do the wrong thing, they just take care not to get caught.

 

[Gift2humanity]

People who use intimidation to get people to do things are bullies.

 

[Dadamen]

In Croatia no cane in schools for around 50 years now, but heard from grandfather that they had it. Caning is not good because it learns kids to solve things with violence which is bad.