[lit-ideas] Re: English Pubic Schools
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:33:30 -0500
At 12:52 PM 2/16/2006, you wrote:
I was around 30 or 40 years ago, and it was well established in the
Northeast that a teacher never hits a kid. In Minnesota, well you know
that warring Viking tradition, especially on a farm. So you're saying the
Scandinavians aren't any more inherently civilized than anybody
else. I'll buy it. The thing with the Danish cartoons supports that as
well. Religious people tend to be more authoritarian than secular people
anyway (the Catholic school thing).
I went to a public school 25 years ago and the teachers made us hold our
hands out and let them hit us with a 12" ruler if we did something "bad".
It didn't really hurt at all but it was a sort of a precursor to what was
next if we REALLY misbehaved. If we WERE especially bad, we got sent to the
office where the principal hit us repeatedly with a leather "strap" on open
palms faced up.
My grade 5 teacher had a three warning system. Each day, everyone in the
class started at 0. If you got to a third 'warning' before 3:30. you were
removed and summarily strapped. IN 9 months of grade 5, only 3 people in
our class of about 35 got "The Strap" but hundreds got to two warnings and
then shut up for the rest of the day. I'd say it worked, but that would be
very uncivilized of me.
Amazingly, to me and my parents, I only ever suffered the strap once and
that was for laughing when a particularly fey male teacher was hitting me
with a ruler. I was sent to the office where I sat for a good 30 minutes in
anticipation of our 6' 4" 250 Scottish Rugby player of a principal giving
me "THE STRAP".
The anticipation was actually worse than the strapping itself. He began by
extraordinarily slowly opening a drawer which housed the strap. He then
placed it on the desk beside his pen/pencil holder and proceeded to talk to
me for another 15 minutes about what I did wrong and things of that nature.
Then he stood up (remember I was about 3'8" at the time) and towered over
me. He proceeded to roll up JUST his left sleeve, very very slowly. I had
seen him sign numerous things over the year, so I knew he was left-handed
and it was the 'business' arm he was rolling up. He never did bother with
the other one. I sat in fear and panic as to what was in store. He took off
his watch ("holy shit, he really means business if he takes of his watch")
and asked me to stand. It was like the being sentenced to the electric
chair. He asked me to hold out my hands and proceeded to wail on me 3 times
on each hand. It really didn't hurt that much -- maybe stung for 5 minutes
but didn't leave any mark at all -- but the process was what mattered. He
was a huge guy and could have really hurt me, but he held back and both he
and I knew it. But it was understood that there was "more" where that came
from.
I certainly was in NO hurry to ever get the strap again, and in the three
remaining years of elementary school, I didn't. Once again, in my case, as
in many other kids, it worked. There is no question that corporal
punishment works in most cases. It's the hard cases that it doesn't. Of
course you can't hit a child repeatedly who doesn't learn the first time.
It gets to be a waste of time and escalates into abuse. But if a child
lives in fear of EVER getting spanked again, it has done it's job. You only
need to smack him once.
Today, not only do the kids have the ability to sue teachers, but worse
yet, they KNOW they have that ability and can defiantly laugh at a teacher
and say "if you lay a finger on me, I'll sue". It's really no wonder the
kids of today lack respect. And they REALLY, REALLY do lack respect. They
never have to suffer ANY consequences really until they are 16. I think the
boat has already sailed on that one by that age.
old-fashioned,
Paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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