CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 6

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

The general tone of the correspondence on this subject suggests that corporal punishment is resorted to solely by brutal, lazy or incompetent teachers for the sole purpose of "teaching" them their lessons —in other words, as a substitute for teaching. Ido not accept this suggestion. There may be odd cases of such an utterly indefensible and stupid practice, but, on the whole, corporal punishment is not administered except for wrongful conduct, as, for example, impudence, insubordination, laziness, carelessness, theft, lying, filthiness, wanton unpunctuality, bulging, indecency and the like. I am well aware that not all teachers punish, in such cases, with care and discretion. I am also aware that sometimes a teacher may make the mistake of punishing for a delinquency when, in fact, there is none—as, for instance, when nervousness is mistaken for impudence or mental inferiority is mistaken for laziness or carelessness. Nevertheless, I think that reasonable persons will expect teachers to be on the alert for real delinquencies such as I have mentioned. To suppose that there is no tendency to delinquency in children, or to suppose that if there is such a tendency it is relatively negligible, is to fly in the face of fact. And yet nearly all your correspondents have treated this side of the question as negligible. They have said'practically nothing about it. When it is remembered that the law of all lands provides punishment for delinquency, that most parents are prepared to chastise their children if necessary, and that for delinquencies God Himself provides punishment of great severity and indefinite duration, it . becomes somewhat difficult to believe that children, especially when herded together in schools, can be expected to go on regularly without giving cause for punishment. May I point out that the really delinquent child rarely tells his touchy parents the true cause of his punishment. May I add that most parents refuse to recognise any wrong or defect in their own children. It is nearly always the teacher or the other children who are held to be in the wrong. UNBIASED.