I was asked by my nephew what my school days were like when we were having a conversation about school in general. I told him that my classes were sparsely different to his and we had a longer day and less term breaks. During the conversation he asked about detention for not completing homework.

I told him detention was not a regularly used form of punishment because CP was used in my day. My young namesake neice pricked up her ears and started asking questions about what we got instead of detention, thinking that she learn how to get out of doing homewiork. Ten points for trying!

I told them that we got the belt for missing homework assignments. My nephew thought a bit and then asked if this happened in every class period. I told him yes, and said that sometimes some of my classmates got two or three strappings in a day for missing homework or misbehaviour.

The above being true in one case because one of the boys in my class had ADD which was unknown back then. I thought the teachers would have realised there was something wrong with the poor sole (but what else can you expect from Morons) because he hardly ever spoke, and when asked a question by the teacher, his silence earned him a couple of strokes with the strap because the ratbag of a teacher assumed he hadn't been studying.

I told my nephew and neice it was a different time and although we felt it unfair to be belted, even when we gave a good explanation, we had no other alternative than to take it. I felt this was unfair when you had the senario of a person who couldn't answer the question a problem and his parents were of no help to him or her.

I told him this seemed to be universal policy in the schools in my time but there were some teachers who knowing that they had to go through the actions were not as severe as other theachers. I told him he was lucky that CP is no longer in use in schools and he is very lucky it isn't.

Classroom strappings for gross misbehavour were not a regular occurance, but there were cases where teachers would call out a group of alleged miscreants for a hand warming as they used to call it. I am certain that there were a few teachers who enjoyed this exercise.

My nephew went on to tell me what offences resulted in detention. Swearing at teachers happens nearly everyday and my nephew, at 13 years of age is appauled by his classmates behaviour. As he sees it, he is there to learn but he doesn't appreciate having to attend detention when it isn't his fault.

He told me that one teacher,a woman, does not hesitate to hand out class detentions when there is only one person misbehaving. I told him he should approach the teacher and explain that he never gets into trouble and feels it unreasonable that he has to attend attend detention for sitting in the classroom trying to learn. I told him he should tell his teacher he wants to take his grievance to a higher authority as this would show he is standing up for his own rights.

One thing seems to be unchanged since I went to school and that is the unfairness of teachers when it comes to discipline.

Mike
There is unfairness in all walks of life, where the innocent suffer
as a result of the guilty, but what do you expect, when the kids are
taught if one child is naughty in class the innocent have to be punished
too. They are going to take that philosophy into their adult life.

Mike

You often hear children today say there is no way a teacher would have used CP on me, I would have told them where to get off. Many find it hard to conceive, just how much power teachers had over us then, how ready and conditioned we were to oblige.

It goes without saying several cases of ADD and dyslexia ( unrecognised back then) resulted in children being left to struggle, punished unwarrantedly, teachers showed little concern for such pupils, offered no extra help or even recognised any underlying problems, all to easy to give a good whack, and ,or verbal dressing down, than do a decent job of teaching and helping such, primary schools in particular seemed a good breeding ground for such apologies of teachers.

Tell me a school that didn’t have the odd teacher that punished a class for the misdemeanours of the guilty few. I suppose the idea, the innocents would bring pressure or ostracise the wrong uns in reality it never worked like that, it was accepted, an us and them situation, them being the teachers. No one would ever have tried to argue how unjust it all was.

As for your nephew, I expect his lone voice in protest would go unheard unless he could muster a few supporters, then, I don’t hold out much hope for a sympathetic ear. Like you say some things remain unchanged, teachers haven’t the same power or deterrants over their charges , but guess what little they retain, they like to hang onto, albeit right or wrong.

Ketta

Hello Ketta and Paul. Nice to read your replies. I was concerned after posting that I was being one eyed in the case of my nephew but in all honesty, he is a very well mannered and polite young teen. I have to say my neice is too and she and I have a bond in a way. They do have another uncle-their mother's brother but they have never seen him. He's a stranger bod anyway and lives in NZ.

Paul, never a truer word spoken, re your reply. I know from personal experience all about what I feel is nothing more than Bastardization. And it isn't just schools who engaged in it either. I have memories of one of the members in my Flight ( Airforce equivalent of an Army Platoon for those not familiar with the term) being one minute late lining up. We all had to run an extra 5 laps of the football ground for his tardiness. And he had numerous threats of him walking into a door aimed at him.

Ketta, two years ago I attended a 50th anniversary of one of my Primary schools where I came across four retired teachers, one of them was my old sixth grade teacher who was 81 at the time. I'll get back to him in a moment.

The first male teacher I encountered was an overbearing intimidating Sadist. He came up to me and asked if I had been in his class. I turned to him, looken him coldly in the eye and said, "If I was, do you really think you would be standing here?" I think he got the point and got out of the way very quickly.

The second lady I came across was an Ex-Pat Brit and she also asked me the same question. I was more polite this time and told her I came to the school at the start of fifth grade. I remember her having her arm in a sling after putting her hand through the window when trying to smack some kid with a ruler.She got nicknamed Slugger after that episode.

I was tempted to ask how her aim was with a ruler now but I didn't. I heard her talking with another woman later on and heard her say that she looks after her grandchildren and a few other children where she lives. I wondered if she had a draw full of rulers when I heard that. However, she was quite nice and mellow the day I spoke to her.

Getting back to my 6th grade teacher Ketta, here was a man who never resorted to CP, blaming the innocent or turned a deaf ear on anyone. It was a pleasure seeing him again with his wife and he was one of a very small minority of male teachers had had respect for.

Ketta, I'd also have to say that I am in a reverse situation to yourself. I found Primary school albeit the Catholic Primary, to be alright as far as things went. It was the Secondary school teachers I found unfair.

Sixty percent of my teachers were female of various ages which I think I have already written about in previous posts. As for the men, well had Homicide been legal here we would have had a teacher shortage.

Most of the middle aged male teachers were bullies and shouold never have been allowed near a classroom let alone teach in one. They were disinterested in their jobs, disinterested in answering any questions form their students, unrealistic in their views on student performance and in my opinion,dregs of society.

I don't really have a kind word about my ex teachers, males that is, with the exception of the junior school Headmaster who was terrific bloke.

Kids today as you and Paul point out have no idea of what school in our time was like. They have no idea of how intimidating teachers were and they are lucky.

The worst memory I have is of my Maths teacher (I was 14 at the time) punching me in the stomach because I wouldn't own up to something I didn't do. If this happened today he'd be charged with assult.

It's easy to stand over a kid, but I'd like them to try it on with an adult, someone....someone, like me!

Mike is too modest to tell you that he got the Maths teacher back in adult life & simply through a chance encounter.

I wouldn't normally breach a confidence here, but I suspect my fellow forumites will realise that Mike is not a vengeance person in most circumstances. I don't think many of us would have desisted from paying that sort of human dog excrement back in it's own coin.

We had an advert or series of them a couple of years back, Mike,:

"You never forget a good teacher"

Very true. But they forget to add

"You certainly never forget a useless one, and you will never rest until you get the sadistic one!"

We only had one at MGS-Jeff Dunning, Physics teacher & very frightening-little bloke(as Noel Coward said-never trust them, dearie, bums too near their brains!)& too fond of face-slapping.

Lost it in my 4th year & slapped some 1st year who was running in a busy corridor. Knocked him against the door of a classroom & cut his head open. GD was swiftly transferred out of MGS-unbelievably to a Manchester Grammar.

Presumably, if he'd killed the kid, he might have had the chance to teach Cam the Sham at Eton!


Steve

Mike, I remember a few years back when my youngest daughter was still at
school, she was telling my wife and myself how cheeky they were to their
teachers at school, we told her no way would you have been allowed to get
away with that behaviour, in our day. We told her of the consequences her
behaviour would have merited then, she just puffed and said they wouldn't
dare touch us, we said, I think you would have found you didn't have a say.
They look at you as if your exaggerating, in disbelief.
I remember an incident when I was 14, we had a student music teacher, I took
a instant dislike to him, a typical weasel. They felt he was ready to take
charge on his own, so they let him take a lesson without supervision, the songs we sang then were the same tunes as TV adverts, our usual teacher let
us sing the advert words first, to get them out of our system he said.
Well the weasel took exception to myself and two others singing the advert
words, lined us up at the front of the class and walked up and down the
line trying to intimidate us. I just looked at him with contempt, he didn't
know what to do, so he slapped me across my face, like a woman would, I just
boiled up inside, how I stopped myself from punching him I'll never know, well
I do, I would have been made a example of and had a caning of all canings.
I wonder how he got on when he got a teaching post?

Hello Paul, nice to hear from you. I would have given your music teacher what we call a Fitzroy Uppercut, a Vitorian suburb where it was alleged to be common practice back in the early 1900's. A Fitzroy uppercut is an Aussie name for a knee in the groin.

Speaking of music teachers, we had a female music teacher who tried to form a chior at the school with aspirations of the chior performing in inter school competitions. Never got off the ground though.

Each class member was brought to the front of the room where the piano was and given a peice of sheet music to sing. Long story short, I received a clip round the ear for not trying. I told her I couldn't sing to save myself but the real reason is that I can't stand my own voice.

Some years later my band had a job at a wedding reception and whoc should be at the table next to our band table was Mrs F. At first I didn't recognise her because if I did I wouldn't have sat daown at our breaks.

She eventually came over and said she thought she knew me but didn't know where. I filled in the blanks for her. She said she didn't know I played an instrument and she mentioned the chior. I told her about my audition, complete with smack in the head and she laughed about it and then apologised.

I asked why she apologised and she said that she had been watching me all night and saw I wasn't near a microphone. It was then she realised that I was telling the truth about my vocal ability. I just simply said I prefered playing an instrument and had she had been trying to form a school band I would have told her I played an instrument.

When I thought back on it, I did deliberately go off key when singing as most of the others did. I also realised that our chance meeting some years later brought up the old addage; some things do come back to bite you. It was true in this case. Meeting my old music teacher porved that to me.

Hello Mike, out of all the teachers I came into contact with while at school, there are only two I had any respect for. The first a woman who taught me in my first two years in the juniors. She never hit anyone, standing on your chair with hands on head was the worst you could expect and that was rare.
She wasn't arrogant or unfair, she had a way of making a subject ie maths, English, History interesting, if you did well you got a star, which meant a lot when your 6 and 7, trying to get as many as you could during a term.
The other teacher was my Headmaster at secondary school, although he did use the cane, he was very fair and always listened to what you had to say.
Mike is corporal punishment still in use in Austalia? The only two posts I've read from your country are yours and Halfpenny's, which I was very impressed with, describing her two canings. The strap seemed to be used a lot in Catholic Schools, over in our country too, I wonder what the reason behind that was?

I'm also in Australia - and this is the current situation concerning corporal punishment in schools.

School level education in Australia is the responsibility of the state and territory governments, and the rules differ from state to state.

Corporal punishment is banned by law or regulation in state schools in all six states, and in the Australian Capital Territory. It remains an option in state schools in the Northern Territory, but I haven't seen anything to indicate it is still in use.

It is further banned in private schools in the states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory. It remains an option for private schools in the states of Western Australia, Queensland, and Victoria, and there are schools in all three states which still use it, though only a small number of schools.

The situation with regards to Catholic schools is somewhat complicated. Australia has large Catholic school systems in each state. These schools are private schools, but most of them are under the direct control of the Diocese or Archdiocese in which they are located, and in the three states where corporal punishment remains permissable, it is up to each Diocese or Archdiocese to determine whether corporal punishment can be used. In nearly all cases, they have banned corporal punishment in schools that are part of the Catholic system.

Not all Catholic schools are part of the Catholic system. Some are independent schools, and there are also independent schools from a wide variety of other Christian denominations, and other faiths, as well as a few that are secular in nature. These are the schools which, in the three states mentioned, may still use corporal punishment, though only a minority do.

In terms of implements used, this has also historically differed from state to state, especially with regards to state schools.

In New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, and Western Australia, the cane was prescribed as the only legal implement for use in state schools. In Victoria, the strap was prescribed in the same way. Tasmania allowed the use of a cane or strap, Queensland allowed for the use of any reasonable implement, but in practice, the cane was most commonly used, and South Australia was fairly evenly split between the cane and the strap.

Catholic schools generally used the same method as the state schools in their state.

Most independent schools used, and, where corporal punishment is still permitted, still use, the cane. But the strap wasn't uncommon.

A wide variety of other implements were unofficially used.

In most states in state schools, corporal punishment was meant to be administered to the hands by the second half of the twentieth century - Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory officially required this, other states were more flexible. Again, Catholic schools normally followed state school practice.

Independent schools generally punished on the bottom.

The corporal punishment of girls was banned in state schools in Victoria and Queensland, and banned for girls over 12 in New South Wales and Western Australia (New South Wales briefly allowed the corporal punishment of older girls in its state schools during a period of reintroduction in the late 1980s and early 1990s). The Catholic systems generally didn't ban the corporal punishment of girls, but discouraged it. Private schools could punish boys and girls, but corporal punishment was far more common in boys schools than girls schools. In co-educational schools, it was quite common to allow for the corporal punishment of boys but not girls until the mid 1980s, when this was ruled to be discriminatory (single sex schools are allowed some latitude with equal opportunity laws, which do not apply in co-ed schools).

All these rules were not always followed. In particular, a lot of schools seem to have decided the rules only applied to the big guns of corporal punishment - the cane and the strap. So, girls might get the ruler even in states where they weren't supposed to be physically punished - because only the cane was seen as real corporal punishment.

I thank you DD for your information, you've obviously put a lot of time
and effort into your research. In Britain there are no grey areas CP was
totally banned in all state schools in 1986, although private schools
carried on for a few years after.

Paul, to give you some information I had been in contact with Halfpenny about a year or so ago by e-mail. Whilst I can't confirm or deny Halfpenny's writtings, I can definitely tell you that the school does exist. It is in inner Melbourne situated on a busy road.

Have you thought about searching the net for infomation you require? I say this because you will be able to see for yourself what is true and what is not. I never believe everything I read from unknown people and unknown sources. This way I weed out the fantasists which lurk about on the net.

Getting back to your last entry, I would suggest you search this topic for your own satisfaction because you will get more accurate information. People like to contribute but how accurate their information is remains to be seen.

I prefer to do my own research on topics of interest and am only giuided by people I know and trust to provide me with accurate information.

In regards to Halfpenny, I am prepared to say that I know the school, I know where it is situated which is inner Melbourne, I know what Religion the school is. My wife works for an IVF specialist who has three children attending there. My Physio therapist was a former student as was the therapists sister. I know my Physio is ten years older than Halfpenny and the sister is about four years older.

I can only say that my Physio had a different recollection of the school as that of Halfpennies. I'm not going to say one way or another Paul because school policy may have changed between the time my Physio was there, the sister was thaere and Halfpenny was there.

I also know Halfpenny's age which was supplied in an e-mail. Because I believe in people's privacy, I can't give any more details. I also prefer not to judge unless I have an arsenal of facts to support my statement.

Paul, you might say I am a politician! You may also realise that I am a person who does not betray a confidence. I do correspond with others from this forum privately and you are welcome to if you wish.

I would be happy to tell you what my Physio told me if you wish to know. I can also give you a run down of what the school is like now without mentioning its name.

It's not so much that I've done research into this, Paul, as that I've picked up this knowledge in the course of my career. I've been teaching since 1959 and I have watched a lot of things change in Australian education over the years. My Doctorate is in educational psychology, so I have done a lot of research on a lot of things, but the bulk of my knowledge comes from simply watching what's happened, reading the trade journals, and talking to colleagues whenever the opportunity arises. I was mentored by some fine teachers and I've done the same myself, and so I have contacts all across the country - and not just across Australia, but overseas as well. It's not hard to know what's going on when you have your ear to the ground, and it's only got easier and easier as communication options have improved.

I wanted to comment on some of the other statements made in this thread, but haven't had time until now (Sunday afternoon, my time) to give them the attention they deserve. We're at the business end of the school year for our most senior students at the moment and I am sure that people can understand that my boys in their final term of their school life, with their exams rapidly approaching (a few have already begun), expect us to be given them a lot of attention. But they all seem to have gone away for the moment.

Some people have commented on the unfairness of schools. And I happen to agree that, by some measures, schools are unfair places in comparison to the rest of society. But there are reasons for that that I think a lot of people don't seem to consider.

Sometimes it seems to be that a lot of people seem to feel that schools should be held to the same standards when it comes to behavioural matters, that we (at least in theory) hold our criminal justice system to. That might be reasonable - if schools had people with the same training as police officers and detectives available to handle those behavioural matters. If schools had forensic laboratories. If they had courts with judges and barristers. In short, if we had the mechanisms available to us that are made available to deal with behavioural issues in our society.

We don't.

Instead 'crimes' in schools fall to a teacher to investigate. A teacher who is not trained to investigate these things, and who actually has a very important job to do in a very limited time, and who has to accept that if they spend too much time investigating misbehaviour, it cuts into the time they have to actually teach. Most teachers do their best to be fair. But there are serious limits on what their best is.

I am, most decidedly, not a fan of whole classroom punishments - but if you have a class of 28 students, and more than 20 of them are involved in a disruption, can you imagine how hard it is to know which of the students weren't involved? Especially seeing that most of your attention was probably focused on the ones who were involved in it. Yes, it is very unfair when a child is given a detention as part of a misbehaving class and they weren't misbehaving. But often times the teacher is faced with the reality that if they don't take action now, the next class will also be disrupted, and the one after that. And that is even more unfair to the child who is in that class and who wants to learn and do the right thing.

In my view, it's far better for that innocent child to serve an unfair detention and then have the opportunity to learn from then on in that class, than for that innocent child to be constantly denied the opportunity to learn. I do not, for one moment, expect the child to see it that way - but it isn't my job to give the child what he wants. It's to give him what he needs.

Now, I'm a very experienced teacher, and I have the luxury of working in an independent school. I actually very rarely need to resort to handing out these sorts of punishments. First of all, my classes are normally well behaved, secondly, I am normally able, through dint of long experience, to identify who was and who wasn't involved. But very few teachers are as experienced as I am - and teachers in state schools here (and that is the majority of teachers) also have to worry about issues that I don't need to consider. One of these is that they are not supposed to use prior knowledge of a child in assessing whether or not they should be punished.

The idea behind this is that a teacher should not assume a child is guilty, simply because they were guilty in the past. And I can certainly understand that - but there's another side to it - a teacher also should not assume a child is innocent because the child was innocent in the past.

Working in an independent school, for the moment, I'm not bound by these principles (this will supposedly change in the near future) so I can pick and choose and apply commonsense to them. Teachers in state schools don't have the same freedom and it can lead to some pretty ridiculous situations.

If I feel the need to hold in a class because of general misbehaviour, I can look around the room and let Nguyen leave because I know Nguyen always does the right thing, even if I didn't actually observe him doing the right thing on this occasion. When Benjamin protests and says he wasn't misbehaving, I can let him go because I know from past experience that Benjamin doesn't lie about things like this - when he misbehaves and is caught, he cops it sweet. He only complains when he genuinely believes it's unfair. I'm still allowed to apply my knowledge of the boys past in these cases. Teachers in state schools are much less able to.

But in the end, in my view, it comes down to a pretty basic scenario. Schools, and teachers, have a responsibility to try and create the best possible overall learning environment for the children in their care. This is not the same as saying it has to be perfect 100% of the time - that's not achieveable. But you want it to be as close as possible to perfect as often as you can make it so. If a teacher feels the need to be unfair to some pupils in a class for 15 minutes, because they feel it will create a better classroom environment for the next three 45 minute periods, then the choice is pretty clear. No, it isn't fair. But it's fairer than the alternative.

My school still uses corporal punishment, and we've gone to considerable lengths to make the use of that punishment as fair as we possibly can make it. We have processes in place so certain boys can be exempted from such punishment, or so that an even higher level of care than normal is taken before they experience it. Every boy has three separate avenues of appeal available to him if he's facing corporal punishment and an absolute right to exercise all three appeals if he wants to do so, or two appeals, or one. There are additional procedures in place for a punishment to be reviewed later, after the event, even if it was carried out, which may not help the boy much, but is an extra layer of protection for the boys as a whole. It's a very robust system, and it works reasonably well.

Consideration is currently being given to extending this process to other forms of punishment in the school - most notably detentions. The problem is doing this would be, logistically, extremely difficult. Put bluntly, we don't currently have the resources to do it, and to get them, we'd have to make cuts somewhere else. This is the reality of discipline in schools. Balancing fairness with other things that are also very important.

Mike, I'd like to hear what you've been told, even if nobody else would. For all I know, things may have changed a lot at my school over the years, considering the changes since I left there, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I can only talk about my own experiences, and those of people I knew well. Nothing else.

Hello Halfpenny, there really isn't very much more I can add to what I have already written. Besides, would that not be betraying a confidence? I am not a secret society, I am a society with secrets! I'm sure you can appreciate from personal experience with me.

The only thing I can admit is that the three of you all went to the same school. Different administrations, different staff perhaps, difficult to say as you were not all there during the same period.

Halfpenny, in regards to the school today I will have to ask the Doctor about what her children do there. I can say that she goes to a lot of sports meetings where her children compete. Recently she went to a swimming competition but I am unsure whether it was just the school itself or a competition against other schools.

I'm happy to relay on any information I gather from Doctor K when it comes to hand. I used to work part time for her and my wife is her PA and office manager so I should be able to receive som info fairly quickly.

If you like, I still have your e-mail I think so I can send you info there rather than on this thread. Just let me know via here.