TEACHER DEFIED.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 115, 18 May 1927, Page 12

TEACHER DEFIED.

STRAP USED OK BOY. ASSAULT CHARGE FAILS. <(Bj Telegraph.—Own Correspondent-) ELTHAM, Tuesday. A decision upholding a schoolmaster for flogging a boy was given by Mr. R. W. Tate, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court to-day. The action was taken against the headmaster of Manaia School, James Nairn, for assault on the ground that IJhe punishment was excessive. The complainant was John Douglas Borrie, whose •on, Malcolm, was flogged. The circumstances were that the teacher of the email children at the school appealed to the headmaster to ■top the big boys from interfering with the play of the small children, and reported Borrie and another boy for so doing. When the class assembled the two boys were called up before the head- » master. The one admitted his fault, and was given a final warning. Borrie adopted a defiant attitude and thrice refused to answer. The headmaster then took out a strap and flogged him across the shoulders with four strokes. Still he would not answer. "In my opinion," said Mr. Tate, "sufficient cause existed and the headmaster was justified in flogging the boy for defiance. The flogging administered was reasonable. When corporal punishment is necessary, as in this case, I think that to be effective on the offender ■ome superficial skin marks are inevitable. "I cannot refrain from saying that some of the evidence I heard convinces me that the boy lives in an atmosphere of disrespect to his headmaster. His defiance of the constituted authority of his little world was a natural result of that atmosphere and a flogging sooner or later was an inevitable consequence if the school discipline were to be maintained." The information was dismissed.