It always amazes me what we had to put up with at school in the Sixties and the early Seventies.
It was a goddamn battlefield and I'm not talking about the kids. I mean the teachers. They were weaponised.
Weaponised teachers on a mission to beat the hell out of us kids!
I'm talking about corporal punishment. The legal injury of young bodies in school!
It may seem like a quaint blip in education's history but it was no laughing matter at the time. Allowing teachers to smack, hit, wallop and cane youngsters was a bad idea. Period.
Looking back the thought that on a day when you could be deliriously happy playing Joseph in the school play you could also get the strap several times on each hand executed by the deranged Head of Chemistry seems like some sort of sick joke to me now.
I was strapped. For dancing on a lab table. OK I shouldn't have been on the table before the teacher came in but to actually hit me with a rubber strap for it is ridiculous.
I also had a wooden board rubber thrown at me from the front of the classroom. Being a W I was sat the back. Now that took some umph to wang that rubber all the way to the back. It caught me on the shoulder in a cloud of white chalk-dust but could easily have knocked me out. All for not knowing where we where in David Copperfield! I ask you!
I once saw an art teacher stand on a chair to give him extra height when leaping off to whack some poor kid's hand with a stick. They might as well have given psychopaths baseball bats.
For a vivid glimpse of how it was just watch the old movie Kes, set not too far from where Moonbase is now. There's whacking aplenty in it.
Not all Secondary justice was heinous. For mimicking an English teacher's funny voice I was commanded to write out 100 vocabs - that's words and definitions from a dictionary. I remember Ziggurat was one, as in the Ziggurat of Ur.
Many teachers were fine too. Nice, helpful people who never hit anyone.
I was never keen on school I don't think. Its blizzard of rules was stifling for me but somehow I managed to get through it in one piece and pick up some O levels, because I enjoyed English Lang and Lit, History and Geography, subjects with words at their heart and for me words and their meaning were everything.
In an arc of supreme irony fifty years later I work in education and despite the school rules being ever present no-one gets walloped by teachers anymore thank God.
Nostalgia can have its bruises. I don't expect everyone to agree.
It managed to pass me by. I never saw anyone get corporal punishment when was a pupil, nor knew anyone who did. By the time I became a teacher it was all gone.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Kev. A dark chapter in schooling.
DeleteBack in the 70s, recalling my schooling between the ages of 11 and 18 I'm always amazed why some of the teachers actually became teachers. They knew their subject but hated children. This sort of thing had happened for decades. There were good teachers of course. Of the bad teachers I actually got a A grade in French 'O' level through total fear. The teacher used to hit pupils on the head with a tea tray if they got anything wrong. I remember the flying board rubber too! I can still remember what I was taught,it being drummed into me, but I have zero joy in that subject and would not go on to 'A' level French purely because of what had happened.
ReplyDeleteI was reading the Facebook page for my old school and someone posted that while lots of posts were of pupils saying they had a great time, great teachers and it really helped them in their future careers, he also remembers the bullying, the name calling from a small minority of other pupils and the brutality and abuse of some of the teachers. Other postees just said 'ah well it happened everywhere in the 70s'. I suppose the ones who didn't have such a good time don't really go to the school Facebook page anyway. It wasn't a bad school and I did get a good education by keeping my head down and not getting noticed. Shame it wasn't very enjoyable. Careers advice was zero too, they just expected you to go to university., if you left at 16 they didn't really care what you did. I'm glad things have changed a lot.
Sounds very familiar that Yorkie, your school days. very. I couldn't stand French either despite a love of words. there was bullying at my Secondary school too and some extremely tough kids. I never went to any reunions and our school was demolished for a housing estate in the 80's I think. I don't do Facebook but I would curious to know where some of my old flames ended up but not enough to make me sign up. It was a Catholic school and down the road was a Protestant school. There were often wars between the two. I thought the whole school/ religion thing ridiculous. I loved my family life back then but school, especially Secondary school, was a necessary chore.
DeleteI certainly think that the use of the tawse was misused, Woodsy, even abused, which is what led to it being abolished. However, although I was sometimes a victim of its misuse, I think it's gone too far the other way nowadays, with teachers (and parents) not being allowed to administer any physical chastisement. I believe parents should be able to smack their unruly kids (on the back of the legs or bottom) and that teachers should be able to use the strap in serious cases of misbehaviour. Not for forgetting homework or talking in class and minor stuff like that, but where a pupil physically assaults another pupil - or even teacher. But yes, teachers definitely went much too far back in 'our day'.
ReplyDeleteI saw an assault by a twelve year old on a teacher last week Kid. I'm glad corporal punishment is banned 'cos I think the teacher might have done some serious harm to the violent boy. I recall the strap being incredibly painful. I've never been caned thank God!
DeleteHere in the US corporal punishment was certainly frowned upon when I was in school, but some of the older teachers still engaged in it.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood the people who wax poetic about their school days. The day myself and some of my friends graduated from the public education system the only real emotion we felt was one of blessed relief.
[And despite the dire predictions of our teachers, principals and guidance counselors we all went on to college and became at least fairly successful, despite not turning our homework in on time!]
Well done Captain Steve! Schools out and you did alright for yourselves! Did you have to wear uniforms in the US? I did between the ages of 11 and 15. At 16 we could wear what we wanted in the final year, denims, T-shirts. the lot! I remember I had a purple velvet jacket to go with my bellbottom jeans!
DeleteWell.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I had a very different school experience.
I loved it!
For me, school was a forum for me to find out about things, experience things and do things that I was interested in, or enjoyed, whilst also doing things that I did not like, but which I felt were good for me.
I went to an ordinary Yorkshire primary school followed by a state Grammar school, which became a Comprehensive after two years.
The primary was staffed by optimistic teachers trying to promote the 1960s ideal of the social advancement of working class kids.
Apart from a few clipped ears for cheekiness, I only saw one caning of two boys who had nearly taken another boy's eye out with a belt buckle.
They never did that again !
At the Grammar, the teachers could be more jaded in their attitudes, but were still well meaning, even when firm.
I used school as a means to try to do what I wanted, such as drawing, painting, amateur acting and film making. Things my working class family knew nothing about and couldn't help me with.
I look back fondly on my schooldays and feel sorry for some of you guys, who seem to have had a lousy time, especially those of you at faith based schools, where religious zealotry seems to have outweighed social progression.
Your schooling sounds idyllic Mish, really. I've never experienced the Grammar school system. Was it all boys?
DeleteNo, mixed and modern.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call my schooling 'idyllic', just not unpleasant.
Woodsy, I had the cane to the open palms, and the pump (aka trainer. as they're now called) to the backside, not to mention a slap to the back of the head etc. etc. And I wasn't even a 'bad' kid at school! Teachers just took out their frustrations on us back then, but punishments like those would constitute lawsuits today.
ReplyDeleteSounds bad Charlie. Yes, I've heard of the pump treatment and also the slipper. Crazy hw society let all that happen back then. Modern kids would simply hit the teacher straight back!
Delete