MY BRUSH WITH CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

Just over two weeks ago I happened to meet a former colleague striding along the pavement as I was about to get into my car. He gleefully told me that he was retiring at the end of the year and that it wasn’t “a moment too soon!” I bid him farewell and thought about my years in education as I drove home. It is true that the nature of education has changed dramatically in some ways over the years. Never mind the content of subjects or the way they might be presented in classrooms, it was the notion of corporal punishment that stuck in my mind.

Even though corporal punishment in schools was prohibited by the South African Schools Act (No. 84 of 1996) and implemented from 1997, one still reads about sporadic instances of it being applied in 2022! Every time I do, I wonder why the teachers who still (and illegally so) administer corporal punishment are not taken to book – or perhaps the newshounds are not interested enough to follow through on such reports.

Corporal punishment was accepted without question during my school years. What a barbaric practice it is: allowing adults the freedom to beat a child for even a trifling misdemeanour – and how convenient it was to cite the aphorism, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ as justification for it! Contrary to the belief of many parents and teachers of the time, this phrase does not come from the Bible but from the 17^th-century poem Hudibras written by the poet and satirist, Samuel Butler. Some have used Proverbs 13:24 as support: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: But he who loves him chasteneth him betimes.

I am not entering that debate, but can clearly recall being horrified when a teacher at the primary school I attended for a term routinely smacked children with a ruler on their open hands. This action could be provoked by anything from forgetting to bring a particular book to class to spelling a word incorrectly. I bridled the first time I was smacked on my hand by our science teacher when I was in Standard Six (now Grade 8). He would make the girls hold out their open hands while he whacked the ruler down as many times as he deemed necessary.

My eyes stung with the pain, my fingers swelled and my hand(s) burned. My resolve hardened: I would never grant him the satisfaction of seeing me cry! Ironically, he was an excellent teacher who normally made our lessons interesting – particularly important for me as they were in a language not my own. Perhaps he was simply a product of his time who hadn’t considered any other way of punishing girls who had performed poorly in a test.

Since when has punishment encouraged learning, even less the understanding of concepts?

My epiphany came within the first weeks of my first appointment as a qualified teacher: as I walked towards the headmaster’s office for assistance with a glitch in the payment of my first salary, a small boy from the primary school section reached the door before me. He knocked on the open door and I saw him hand over a note, presumably from his teacher.

I froze with horror as the headmaster, a rather tall man, told the boy to bend down while he selected a whipping cane from a rack against the wall of his office. I could scarcely believe that he could calmly proceed to beat the crying boy six times! No amount of pleading would make the man stop. What could the boy have done to deserve such punishment? I couldn’t help wondering why there had been no discussion with the boy either before or after. What had been the educational value of the exercise?

The snivelling boy returned to his classroom while the headmaster returned the cane to its place in the rack. He then calmly asked how he could help me.

I vowed then and there that I would resolve discipline issues within the classroom and never send any pupil of mine to be caned in such a cold-hearted manner. To my chagrin, I came close – almost too close …

You try to teach Henry V to a class of twenty-five boys who are more interested in fishing, fixing cars and fighting than having anything to do with Shakespeare. I had already had to survive finding live snakes in my desk drawer (such was their sense of humour) or being confronted by one when a boy ostensibly required my assistance. During my first few weeks of teaching at that school I had become adept at confiscating these creatures by placing them in my handbag, which would be kept firmly zipped closed until I could release them in the veld after school.

Shakespeare was several steps too far: with each lesson the boys became rowdier and set about punching each other for entertainment. They were getting out of hand. In desperation one day, I called the ringleader. “Rubino, come with me!”

I stormed down the long passage of the top floor of the building, aware that the stocky Standard Nine (Grade 11) boy was battling to keep up with me. My blood was up and my disappointment in my proposed course of action was throbbing in my ears. I clattered down two flights of stairs and starting striding along the last passage – then stopped. I turned to look at his startled face.

“Where are we going?” I demanded.

“To the headmaster’s office.”

“Why?”

“So I can get caned.” This was obviously a familiar routine for him.

I turned on my heel. “Let’s go back to the classroom.” My teaching career is in tatters, I thought. I’ve lost control of a group of unruly boys and will never succeed in teaching them anything. I felt a failure as I entered the classroom behind the boy. Instead of the derision and laughter I was expecting because I had obviously not carried out my intentions, this lad stood in front of his classmates and growled fiercely, “If any of you mess with ma’am I’ll donner [beat up] the lot of you!”

Looking back after having spent forty years in education, I am proud to say that I never had to resort to outside help in disciplinary matters.