The following was initially written for another forum where long posts were fairly normal. To the best of my recollection, this is an accurate account.
What I'm going to outline here is the single most dramatic punishment I ever witnessed. I've recently been lucky to get access to the punishment book from my old school - I was allowed to photocopy it under certain conditions for historical research purposes. I also got to see some letters and memos written in the aftermath of this incident, and I believe this incident was instrumental in corporal punishment being used much more rarely at my school the following year, before it's abolition completely two years later {Note, since writing this, I have discovered that the strap wasn't actually officially abolished two years later - it was simply not used after that date}.
My school didn't keep any official records of punishment until 1986 - at which point the 'strap book' was introduced, and teachers were required to enter all uses of the strap into the book.
Whatever they were required to do, they certainly did not enter every incident - only one of the many strappings I received at school is in the book - I was the school from 1985-1988 - so for three years a lot more should have been entered for me alone. The strap was used virtually daily somewhere in the school - yet for 1986, only 26 strappings are entered, 21 for 1987, and 14 for 1988. According to the book, the incident I am going to describe - which is entered - occurred on the 16th June 1988. The Headmaster was not at the school at the time for some reason - he was away for several days, and one of our senior Masters was acting as Headmaster. This happened in his absence, and it appears he was not very pleased about it. From 1989, he restricted the strap dramatically. He insisted that every entry was recorded and countersigned by him. The strap was used 5 times in 1989, and twice in 1990 - and that apparently is accurate.
This was my final year at the school - the following year we went up to the senior school. My classmates and I were 13 years old. We were in Year 8 - what had been called Form II until a couple of years earlier.
Now, at the start of this year, we had a new boy in our class. This was incredibly unusual. Virtually everything about my school was rigid at the time - and one thing we all knew was that most of us entered in Grade 5, and a smaller number of students entered in Year 7. Nobody entered the school in Grade 6 or Year 8 - anybody who applied was told to apply for Year 7 entry the following year, or to enter the senior school in Year 9.
But we got a new boy - and this was so unusual that it inspired a lot of comment. All sorts of rumours went around the year as to why this boy had been admitted - a few of our classmates had met him over the summer holidays, and they told us he was incredibly smart, and a bit odd. He was highly emotional and cried a lot, and got angry very easily. In our first English class, he was able to answer questions that none of the rest of us had a clue about. He didn't seem to want to get to know anyone, he'd sit down in a corner of the playground and read. He wore round glasses - I suppose he looked like Harry Potter, who of course didn't exist at the time. He just seemed very strange to all of us.
Most of us, as we got to know him, found out he wasn't that strange. I actually became very good friends with him, and I still am, so I found out a bit of his story. I think it's relevant because it might explain a bit of the school's reaction. This boy, Ian, was a prodigy. He had an IQ of something like 200, he was basically a child genius. He'd spent the previous year at a school quite near where I lived - a school I might have gone to myself if I hadn't wound up where I was. It was a horrible school by all accounts - it had absolutely no discipline system at all - I'm not exaggerating - this school believed kids should be allowed to do whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. And, unfortunately, what a lot of them had decided to do was beat Ian up every single day. He was beaten up, and bullied in some of the most horrible ways I've ever heard - it wasn't normal schoolyard bullying, this is the type of stuff adults would go to prison for 20 years if they did it. And his school had let it happen. He wound up really badly hurt - not just physically, but emotionally as well. He wound up at our school because it was virtually a matter of survival - he needed to be somewhere where the academic standard was high enough to hopefully challenge him (which I don't think really happened that much) and where bullying was much less common.
Anyway - Ian actually settled into the school pretty well. After a few weeks when he realized that people who went up to him and said hallo, normally weren't planning on beating him to a pulp, he started to get involved in lunchtime activities and other things like that. Bullying wasn't common at my school - I think largely because if bullies were caught they suffered for it.
But there was some of it around, and we had three boys in our year who were bullies. They didn't do it much by Year 8 - but they tried it occasionally. And after a month or so at the school, Ian became their focus. I think one of them knew someone at his old school, and found out all the names and things they used to say to him there. And they started on him.
And Ian, mostly, took it. He stood there and took their abuse. Occasionally he flared up a bit - but that was rare. It might have been better if he'd really flared up once or twice - because that might have attracted the teachers' attention as to what was going on. Nobody was going to tell them - dobbing was something we didn't do. The three bullies - Peter, Andrew, and Keith - were also fairly subtle – they didn't want to be caught. Peter was the worst of them - he was the ringleader, the others just followed his lead. They did things like messing up his desk, hiding his homework, and making him drop his lunch. And he took it.
Sport played a pretty big role in the school. Two afternoons we trained for Saturday sport where you were on a set team doing a set sport, but we also had one physical education period a week where each week we played a different sport in our class groups. We all had to have certain sporting equipment and we had to remember to bring the right equipment for the right classes. If you didn't bring your equipment, you got some form of punishment. Normally it was running laps - but by the middle of the year, our sportsmaster was getting sick of people who were forgetting things - so for one class, he brought a strap with him - and told us all that anyone who forgot their gear for hockey, the next week would get it.
Now something that drove Peter and his friends nuts about Ian was he never seemed to get the strap. He behaved himself and while their stealing of his homework had come close to getting him strapped once, the teacher had believed him when he said he'd done it and didn't know where it had gone. Keith had tried the same argument a day or so later and been strapped for not having his homework and lying about it. They took this personally - thinking it was a sign Ian got special treatment. Maybe he did a bit - the teachers knew what he'd been through, I'm sure - but the reason he was believed was because he had credibility - the only other time I'd seen him without homework, he'd admitted when questioned that he hadn't done it, knowing he'd get punished - and accepted the penals he got on that occasion.
But these guys wanted to get Ian strapped - and actually knowing Ian, he wasn't completely and totally adverse to the idea himself. I mean I loved this school - he absolutely, completely and totally adored it. And at that stage - I assume it changed the following year when the strap went into virtual retirement - strapping was a rite of passage in the school. He wasn't going to do anything deliberate to get himself strapped - but I know that he was prepared for it to happen. But he also wasn't going to let anyone make it happen to him.
PE that week was hockey - and for hockey we had to wear our standard winter PE kit - a t-shirt, shorts, long football socks and sandshoes, and wear our soccer shinguards. Sticks and balls were supplied from school stores - but you had to bring your PE uniform and your shinguards. We had PE in the morning that day - first class after arriving at school. The PE routine was pretty simple - we used to drop our bags outside our class when we got to school each morning and then play around until the bell went. On PE day, we then dumped our schoolbags in our class, and took our sports bags to the change rooms, got changed - and did PE until 15 minutes before recess. In the last 15 minutes, we had to shower, and get dressed back into school uniforms - showering was compulsory and fairly unpopular - we had to completely undress and there was a big open shower area.
Anyway - we got down to the change rooms and Ian discovered his shinguards were missing. He knew he'd packed them - and one of the three bullies made a comment that let him know that they had removed them. We all knew that anyone who had forgotten their equipment that day would get strapped. Ian decided to take a risk. He pulled up his socks and he didn't admit he'd forgotten anything - it was a pretty big risk - if he'd been detected, he'd have been strapped for lying to avoid punishment and that was serious cracks. But he wasn't going to accept a strapping manipulated by those bullies, and he wasn't going to dob them in.
We went out and started playing - and Peter, Keith, and Andrew took every opportunity they could to hack at Ian's shins. They were hitting him whenever they could find an excuse - and while the sportsmaster saw it a couple of times and blew his whistle, he didn't notice that Ian wasn't wearing pads - and Ian was trying not to give any sign of what was going on.
At the end of the PE lesson, he limped off the field as we all stripped off and headed for the showers. Peter said something to him - I don't know what - and he responded saying something like: "Give me your best shot."
We headed into the showers - the water started up - we were pretty muddy, so this was not the normal 'get wet hair so the sportsmaster doesn't send you back in, shower.' We only had a few minutes - and if we got out fairly quickly we'd have a slightly extended recess. So everybody was concentrating on showering.
I didn't see the start of what happened next. I don't know how they got Ian on the ground - but there was a noise - a bit of a sound of a fight, and I looked over to see what was happening.
Those three thugs had Ian on the floor in a corner of the showers, doubled over - almost in a fetal position. He was bawling.
And they were peeing on him.
Now we had rules - you didn't dob. You didn't tell on people to teachers. But this went beyond the pale - and thankfully, a couple of guys realized that - and charged out of the shower and told the sportsmaster he had to get in there. He came in at a high speed, and he grabbed Peter and Keith. Andrew darted away. The sportsmaster pushed Peter and Keith towards the door, telling them to get dressed, and Andrew went with them. The water was still flowing. The sportmaster - fully dressed - knelt down next to Ian and helped him up, talking to him very quietly. Our sportsmaster, in the opinion of most of us, was a tough, uncompromising, hard man - but he didn't seem that way at that moment. He was gentle and tender. Until he had Ian on his feet, and asked myself and a boy - one he could trust – to get him dressed and take him to the sickbay. And then he walked out the door - and he was as blindly furious as I have ever seen anyone. Peter, Keith, and Andrew were pulling their clothes on as he got out. I was following a little behind him. And he tore into the three of them as they got dressed. His words alone had them in tears in seconds - and if I'd been them, I'd have been fearful for my safety. We'd all seen angry teachers, and most of us had been belted by them at one time or another - but this man was in a towering rage, and looking at him, I knew that if he started hitting, it wouldn't be controlled punishment - fortunately he had the self discipline that he didn't act improperly - but as soon as they were dressed, he herded those three boys off to the office.
The rest of us got dressed and went to recess. And then up to class. We were meant to have Latin and Mathematics after lunch - subjects taught by the year 7 and year 8 masters respectively. Instead we sat in class reading, supervised by the school librarian. We weren't allowed to talk - we just had to sit there reading. One at a time, every one of us was called out of the class, and taken down to the penals room, where our science master - who was the most experienced teacher in the school, and probably the most respected, quizzed up. We took the questioning seriously - because sitting on the desk next to him was a strap. He apparently asked most of us similar questions - I remember I was told that he was in no mood for lies or attempts to avoid answering - that I was expected to answer any questioned asked regardless of any idea I had about dobbing, and that if he felt I didn't answer honestly and fully, he'd crack me six. This teacher virtually never used the strap anymore - he didn't need to, he could control a class by coughing, but he was legendary with it - we'd all heard about his legendary triple decker many many times. He asked me what had happened in the showers. He asked me if I'd known that Ian wasn't wearing pads, he asked me if I had known they'd been stolen - and how I knew when I admitted I had - he picked the strap up when he asked that question, and only put it down when I explained I knew only because I heard the comment in the changeroom. He asked me if I knew of any previous incidents involving Ian being bullied, and I had to admit that I had. And he asked me if I had ever bullied Ian - and I was so glad I could say I hadn't. Then I was sent back to class. I went back to class intact - most of us did - but a few came back showing signs they'd been strapped.
The inquisition wasn't finished by lunch - so lunch was cancelled for us. It was a pretty awful experience sitting in that class, listening to the younger boys outside playing, totally forbidden to speak, being escorted to the toilets by a Brother, who made it clear we still couldn't talk, getting hungry and thirsty and watching boys return to the class, pale, shaking, sometimes in tears - I think, from memory, those considered most likely to have misbehaved were called later, and got a harder time of it.
Finally around 2.00pm or so, everybody had been questioned. And we continued to sit there reading, and waiting - until at 2.30am, the year 7 master appeared and told us all to pick up our seats and file in silence to the changerooms.
The changerooms were pretty much the largest enclosed area in the school - on a Saturday morning, we could sometimes have two football teams and two soccer teams trying to use it so it needed to be fairly large. Only the library and the chapel were larger - that's the only reason we were taken there, I think - because it was a convenient space that all of our year - about 60 of us - could fit into.
We were directed to place our seats in rows - we'd done this once before when they'd shown us a sex ed film in this room, so we knew where we were supposed to put everything. At the front of the room - where the film screen had been on the last occasion - was a vaulting horse, dragged out from the sports stores next to the changing room. Peter, Andrew, and Keith were all sitting on a bench near the horse, looking absolutely wretched. They had tear streaked faces, they were pale - Keith was actually trembling.
Our senior master stood at the front of the room, our form master standing next to him. And our form master began to speak, or really, he began to yell. He told us all that they were incredibly disappointed in us - virtually all of us had admitted we knew that Ian was being bullied, and not one of us had thought to tell a teacher about what we knew. This meant we all shared part of the blame and the responsibility for what had happened.
And then our senior master, began to speak - much more quietly, more calmly, but he was obviously very serious about what he was saying. Now this man was an idol to most of us. He had been at the school longer than any other Master, but more than that he'd also been at the school as a boy in its very early days. He was the keeper of the schools history, and of its traditions to us. And he told us that a decision had been taken that afternoon, and that that decision was that bullying, in any shape or form, was no longer acceptable under any circumstances at the school. That they intended to eliminate it from the school as completely as was humanly possible. That from now on any boy caught bullying, would be as severely punished as the Masters could devise. That any boy who did it a second time, would no longer be welcome at the school. That if cases of bullying were detected, any boy who had known about the bullying and who hadn't reported it would be strapped - we were required to report any incident, or be complicit in the crime. Victims were required to step forward and report their tormentors - and if they did not, they themselves would be strapped, because anyone who bullied one boy would bully others. He then apologized to us on behalf of the school and the staff. He said that they had failed us. They'd accepted that a little bit of bullying was to be expected in a school and so they'd never really
tried to get rid of it completely - but that now they would, because the incidents that day had shown us all that a little bit of bullying can rapidly grow. The rot was going to stop. Starting now.
Keith was told to stand up and come over to the horse - he was really shaking now, I don't think I've ever seen such a scared child again in my life. He was made to bend over the horse, facing towards us, as our form master moved into position behind him with a strap. And he applied it well. They were heavy, hard strokes, and Keith pretty much shrieked and screamed at every one of them. He got six. And then he was told to stand, and to go out the door.
Andrew was next - and he got the same treatment. He took it better – he didn't actually scream - but we could see his face and we could see the pain on it, and the crying, and it was impressive to see. Again, he got six. And then he left.
Peter was last - and he was crying freely. He obeyed our form masters instructions almost as if he was in a trance. He made a weird sort of whooping sound - exhaling air as the strap hit, and it hit even harder it seemed than it had for the other two. We were in a brick room, with a cement floor, no real windows, every noise echoed around the room – the sound of strap falling, and the weird whooping sound. It was surreal. And then it was over, and he left as well.
I didn't know it at the time - because I was focused on what was happening in front of me - but Ian had been brought to the door at the back of the room - and had witnessed everything standing in that doorway. Peter, Andrew, and Keith could all see him there - they would have been looking virtually straight at him as the strap fell.
He told me later that at that moment, he realized for the first time that he was really and truly safe at our school. Not that bad things couldn't happen there, because they had, earlier that day - but that when they did, the school took the idea of dealing with them really seriously. He felt safe, because he realized that in the eyes of the school, he was worth protecting. And given his experiences the previous year at a school where teachers stood on and watched as he was beaten senseless, and the damage they'd done to him and his emotions, that was very important to him. He told me then and he's told me since that that was the day he got his childhood back, that he felt had been stolen from him the year previously.
My own experiences mean I think corporal punishment can be a good thing, when used appropriately. But what he said... well, that clinched it for me completely.
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