THE STRAP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15920, 4 May 1912, Page 12

THE STRAP.

PLEA FOR ITS BANISHMENT. SCHOOL INSPECTOR'S VIEWS. [From Our Correspondent.] mVERCARGILL, May 3. Mr James Hendry, inspector to the Southland Education Board, made some interesting comments upon the management of schools in his monthly report to the Education Board to-day. "Every teacher," he said, "may be presumed to have in his possession several of the very large number of excellent treatises now available dealing with the management and government of schools, and may further be presumed to have made himself more or less familiar with the principles enumerated therein. It cannot have escaped the most unreflectiye student that however much the writers, of these books may seem to be at variance on certain points of school policy, there is_ at least one matter with respect to which there is practical unanimity, to wit, that corporal punishment should never be inflicted for intellectual faults, for stupidity or ignorance. It should be resorted to only for the worst offences, flat disobedience, obstinacy, vice, gross impertinence, and even for these when there appears to be no alternative, when every other means of dealing with the offences has been tried and failed. Surely then the corollary is obvious, that the instrument of corporal punishment should not be constantly in view of' the children. Acceptance of the above quoted principles would result in its banishment to the teacher's cupboard or drawer, to be produced, only on the few occasions when its use is imperatively necessary. All teachers will cheerfully subscribe to the dictum of the text books, yet many of them signally fail to SQuare their practice with their professed belief. In numerous cases the strap is a permanent exhibit on the school wall or on the teacher's table, a perpetual 'memento obedire.' The folded leather may be used as a pointer by a teacher correcting desk work, it may be observed like the pistol butt of the bad man of the west protruding from the. teacher's pocket, it may even on occasions _ serve the purpose of a necklet to an infant mistress. Now all this is as wrong as it can be, and it is quite.unnecessary that I should point out wherein it is wrong. ■ For an exposition of the Board's attitude on this matter teachers are referred to a pamphlet forwarded to the schools some years ago. Therein they are reminded that the efficacy of the strap is in inverse proportion to the frequence of application, that the . injudicious employment of this artificial stimukis to exertion and good conduct tends to frustrate the very object the teacher has in view, and that the indiscriminate and frequent administration of corporal punishment is an indication of lax discipline, the cause of which is to be sought in the teacher himself.