ABOLITION OF CANING

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23818, 11 December 1942, Page 2

ABOLITION OF CANING

♦ MOTION DEFEATED BY WAITAKI BOARD

(0.R.) OAMARU, December 10. “I ask the (joard whether they want me to add to the current deluge of sloppy sentimentality by turning out, at Waitaki, jellyfish and molluscs or he men with backbone and spirit tough enough to face the stern realities of life.” staled the rector (Mr F Milner) in a letter received at a meeting of the Waitaki High Schools’ Board of Governors this afternoon. The letter referred to the proposals to abolish punishment by cane at the Boys’ High School. In accordance with notice, Mr W. M. Cooper moved the following motion; "That the power to administer the cane be taken away from prefects at Waitaki as from the beginning of the next school year.” “No board has the right to bother Its staff by tying them with disciplinary worries. Teaching is arduous, engrossing, and exhausting,” Mr Milner’s letter concluded. "If on top of this a man has to lose temper, patience, and time by dealing with irritating and provocative aggressiveness and misdemeanours on the part of pupils, on the new fatuous psychological lines, then I say it is a tragedy. In the boarding school sound discipline sanctifies the atmosphere. Let it be swift, stern, and inexorable. The words of Solomon are as wise to-day as they were 2000 years ago: ‘He that spare)h the rod hateth his son, but he that loves him chasteneth betimes’ ”

Speaking to the motion, Mr Cooper said that, because power to use the cane was vested in prefects, it did not mean that the last Board of Governors or even the present board, for that matter. ever agreed to such a procedure “From the point of view of the interest and also the status of our school, caning by prefects is objectionable from every aspect, and 1 must say that I have not' heard one voice raised in support of it." said Mr Cooper. The motion was seconded by Mr C. H. Grocott, who expressed the view that corporal punishment should be left to the leaching staff. In reply to the chairman (Major H S. Orbcll). the rector said that camng by the two head prefects was in vogue when he first came to the school, and in great public schools of England that form of punishment had been In existence for 100 years.

Captain R. H. Hill (Christchurch parents’ representative) said he regretted extremely that the Board of Governors had seen ft to give publicity to the question of caning. Mr Cooper had said that public opinion favoured the abolition of caning, but that was not the view of the Old Boys’ Association, the executive of which the previous night had carried a resolution of protest, "Caning has never done a boy any harm," added Captain Hill, “and I strongly oppose the motion." The motion was defeated, only the mover and seconder voting for it.