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Memorandum on the Use of Corporal Punishment in Schools^*

The College is professionally concerned, but is also aware of its inability to lay down a code of conduct for teachers. The teacher's position is an unenviable one, since he is in the position of a ‘good parent’ and has to apply the standards of the ‘good parent’ but may have no way of influencing the antecedents to the behaviour with which he is confronted. We have been made aware of the fact that in many schools the teachers themselves have discussed ways of phasing out the practice of caning. In a school where a head teacher announced that caning would stop after an interval of two years, the teachers gave up the use of the cane almost immediately.

The use of punishment has its ideological and social aspects. It is a topic on which the parents of children and the staff of schools may be either in conflict or in harmony. Behind the school there remains the family. Children brought up in an harmonious home are able to accept some punishment for their misdeeds and even to accept occasional minor injustice. Children from violent homes may look upon punishment as a confirmation of their disadvantaged position. Children who are suffering from handicap, emotional disturbance or severe deprivation are possibly the most likely to receive it and the most likely to be harmed.

There is a special problem of individuals who show continual social or conduct disorder in the context of relationships with both adults and peers. Many of these have poor educational achievement. Where psychiatric studies have been carried out, it has been found that an important causal factor is an openly disharmonious family in which violence and severe physical punishment are common. For these children school may be the only setting in which violence is not commonplace and where normal social relationships can eventually be achieved.

If corporal punishment is to be completely abandoned:

1. teachers need considerably more support, such as readily available psychiatric treatment facilities for some of the children, supplemented by a variety of counselling services and advice on more general issues.

2. children who are too disruptive for the ordinary class should have access to special educational units.