Corporal punishment 'worked in schools'

Corporal punishment was an effective way of disciplining children, a teachers’ leader said today. A clip round the ear from the local policeman “never hurt me”, said Professional Association of Teachers chairman Barry Matthews as he protested that children now had an “extreme degree of freedom”, including all-too-easy access to alcohol. But Mr Matthews stressed he was not calling for the return of the cane – teachers had to find new methods of “control” in an era when too many children were not shown the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. “As a child I knew there were certain actions that could reap unfavourable rewards.

“I did not enjoy having the cane — having the cane in those days was normal, but we have moved on and the cane is now an historical artefact that we will probably see in museums, but not in teachers’ hands — or having to stay in after school any more than the next person, but I knew that if I stepped out of line I could be subjected to some kind of punishment,” Mr Matthews told PAT’s annual conference in Bournemouth. As a union official, he had in recent years been involved in cases where a child or their parent argued with a teacher’s punishment “even though there is a need to control and it is considered a part of the teacher’s responsibility to control”. He continued: “I have had many discussions with teachers and parents who find it difficult to impose discipline on a child because they are concerned with breaking the law and finding themselves in trouble for applying what they consider to be appropriate disciplinary action to a child that steps out of line.” Mr Matthews said that as a child, it was made very clear to him where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lay.

“If the local bobby, to use the vernacular of my youth, caught me doing something wrong whilst out playing, I would most likely have got a clip round the ear. “I would not have considered it sensible to run home and tell my parents — my reward for being honest might have been that I would have got another clip round the ear.”

Mr Matthews demanded that governors and local education authority independent appeals panels stop reversing schools’ attempts to discipline children by expelling or suspending them. “We need to learn from incidents such as these and make sure that in future such contradictions are avoided and do not occur because they undermine the teacher’s authority and confuse the children.”

Asked whether it would be a good idea to bring back corporal punishment, Mr Matthews said: “I’m not suggesting we should return to those methods. “The controls on me as a child were effective but they are not available today.”

Asked whether teachers should still have the power to administer a clip round the ear, Mr Matthews replied: “It never hurt me, put it this way.” He added: “I think we’ve learned that corporal punishment works for some but there were people who abused the use of corporal punishment, to the detriment of children.

“I wouldn’t want to return to those days.”

Dominic Hayes
27 August 2004

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