reading

fifty years later when i arrived in england as a fourteen year old they were still doing it, but on the hand. when i was due to be caned (for smoking) my mother let the headmaster know in no uncertain terms what her views on corporal punishment were and i got off with a severe warning unlike my friends.

From The Times, February 15, 1921

How, when, and where should pupils in schools be punished? The question was debated by members of the Medical Officers of Schools Association after a questionnaire had been circulated asking as to the forms of corporal punishment in their schools. Dr E H T Nash, who opened the discussion, referred to physical injuries, temporary and permanent, that had been known to follow caning on the hands, and cited cases in which it caused loss of nails, blood blisters, and bruising. This kind of punishment had an injurious effect on the careers of children who were destined for the profession of music. Caning on the hand was only in vogue in State schools. The universal site for it in public and other schools had been described as “a safe soft spot”; no cases of injury had been reported as a result of applying the cane thereto. The authorities in two English cities were in one case against corporal punishment save in exceptional cases, and in the other opposed to it unless the pupil was defiant. Dean Inge had said recently that the son of an earl took caning as part of his education and the son of a bricklayer brought an action for assault against the schoolmaster. The caning given to schoolboys by monitors was of real value in house discipline in public schools. Dr Nash said he was against punishments such as the memorizing of poetry, the writing out of Latin verse, and extra school work, because they created a dislike of literary subjects. Moreover, they were all detrimental, because they kept the pupil from outdoor exercise. Penal drill was bad because, in view of our dependence on a territorial army, it produced a subconscious dislike of all physical training. Punishments, the speaker continued, should be useless and hated by the defaulter. He believed in a modified form of shot drill done with croquet balls. This produced no antipathy to learning or sport. Caning on the hand should be deleted from the list of school punishments on medical grounds. In the discussion that followed, reference was made to the painter Furse, who drew a pony when he was supposed to be working. “You will bring me 50 ponies at 1 o’clock,” said the master, and the 50 were produced, but in one picture which, it was stated, still hangs in a room at Haileybury.