Last night, an Australian current affairs program, Today Tonight broadcast a story called 'The Changing Ways of Schooling'. For the moment - and this may only be for a very short period of time - it can be viewed on their website at: http://au.todaytonight.yahoo.com/

It may be of interest to people here, as it discusses how schools differ today from the 1960s.

It is somewhat sensationalised, and somewhat inaccurate at times, but it's worth watching.

Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me work out if it is possible to save this video before it disappears, and I certainly can't do it even if it possible. And it may not last very long at all.

I have just found an edited version is up at youtube - hopefully that will last longer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99mgqBMJy8A

The reason CP was outlawed in schools wasn't because it wasn't effective. It was outlawed because teachers and administrators abused it. In the video Johnny falls down while running up the stairs. In the 60s instead of a hug Johnny would have been yanked up off the floor and given 6 of the best for running up the stairs. The last thing in the mind of a teacher in those days was hugging a hurt student.

It's certainly true that there were teachers who abused the use of corporal punishment - but in my experience, there were far, far more cases where it wasn't abused.

Children are still being abused in schools today. If eliminating any possibility of abuse is a justification for the elimination of practices that can also help children, then logically we should be outlawing a great many things in schools - if not schools altogether. We'd certainly have to abolish PE lessons, school camps... well, quite a lot of things.

I also agree that it wouldn't have been that uncommon in the 1960s for a boy who was caught running on the stairs to be physically punished. It's a dangerous activity and it needs to be discouraged. Even today a boy will be very ill advised to let me see him doing it at school.

But it's a nonsense to suggest that teachers in the 1960s weren't interested in hugging a hurt student, or comforting them. I certainly was - and did when it was appropriate to do so - hugging wasn't all that common, mainly because the boys I taught were of an age where unless they were very distressed indeed, they would have been so embarrassed by the idea of being hugged, it would have been counterproductive - but a pat on the back, or on the shoulder, and other less effusive forms of physical affection were most definitely something I did as a teacher back then, when a boy needed that type of attention. And there were boys I did hug, if they really needed that, it just wasn't common that they did. And I certainly wasn't the most affectionate of teachers - there were many more who did it far more than I did it.

Sure, I caned them as well, when that was appropriate. Boys need different things at different times. A boy who is distressed because he injured himself, is quite a different matter from a boy you've just discovered lying to you about his homework, and very different from the boy who you've just found out has been bullying younger students.

It could be the same boy, at different times.

Yes, if I'd caught a boy running on the stairs, there'd be a fair chance I'd have caned him. But if he'd fallen over and hurt himself, I wouldn't have. He's already learned his lesson, if he's going to learn it. And now he needs something else.

The fact is, I still do it - as I said, the program is rather sensationalised. Teachers here today do need to be more careful about the way we touch a student, but there really isn't anything to prevent a teacher giving a distressed child a hug. Yes, there is a risk it could be misinterpreted - but while that might cause a few moments of embarassment for a teacher, if they haven't done anything wrong, they really do have nothing to fear. The system still assumes teachers are doing the right thing in the absence of pretty considerable evidence that they're not. I understand that in NSW - where the program this clip comes from originates - the rules and guidelines are somewhat more restrictive than where I live, but the idea that a teacher can't touch children even to the extent of separating fighting children is ridiculous. In fact, in this state, a male teacher was recently deregistered (his registration was restored on appeal, when he demonstrated he'd been badly advised during his training) because he failed to intervene physically when girls were fighting, because he didn't want to touch them. Not only are teachers allowed to touch students, it's mandated in some cases.

Laymen often think teachers can't touch kids anymore, and that might be true someplace - I can certainly believe that in very litigious America, there's places like that, but it's not true here.

Back to my point though - not all teachers in the 1960s were as bad as you paint them, Bob. In fact, I can think of very, very few who were as bad as that. Your experiences might well be different, but they don't constitute the total of human experience.

I'm a teacher largely because I like children. I liked them back then as well.

I think you're a teacher, Dominum, largely because you like caning lads. Now and then. How many lads have you bent over to whack their bums in the course of your notorious career?

What can an Independent School boy do? Little but bend and present and take the whacking while thinking what a lecherous Deputy Head we have.