Bring Back the Cane, Sir

 Even Pupils Agree

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say.  Maybe it's not surprising, then, that in the UK half the parents want corporal punishment to be brought back into schools.  Many schools resemble war zones and a growing proportion parents have apparently had enough.  They no longer believe the naive idealism of their governments; they are ready for some hard headed realism.  And that means support for reintroducing the cane to government schools.


According to the Telegraph,

Some 49 per cent of mothers and fathers are in favour of corporal punishment to crack down on the worst offenders, it was revealed. The vast majority of parents also want greater use of other back-to-basics discipline measures including detention, expulsion and forcing badly behaved children to write lines.

Even a fifth of secondary school pupils themselves support the reintroduction of caning or smacking. The disclosure comes amid claims from Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, that “adult authority” has been eroded in too many schools.

Corporal punishment was banned in the UK in the 1980's.  New Zealand has followed the same naive lunacy.  
Corporal punishment was banned in state schools in 1986.

Some independent schools continued to mete out physical punishment, such as a slap to the hands or ordering press-ups, until it was outlawed 10 years later.But a survey of 2,000 parents and 530 children by the Times Educational Supplement has found strong support for the reintroduction of smacking or caning to discipline the most badly behaved pupils.

The UK Department of Education is strenuously resisting any moves back to employ corporal punishment.  Dark Ages and all that stuff. But they are being pushed.  The Department is "toughening up teachers’ disciplinary powers and restoring their authority,”whatever that might mean.

Of course if authority is once again delegated to government schools in the UK to employ corporal punishment, the next thing will be pressure to de-criminalise disciplinary smacking in homes.  There will be an inevitable linkage.