What Readers Think Letters to the Editor

Timaru Herald, Volume CL, Issue 22063, 9 September 1941, Page 8

What Readers Think Letters to the Editor

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND EDUCATION Sir,—lt has been stated in reference to the introduction of a Bill to abolish capital punishment and flogging for criminals that to be logical the Government should also abolish corporal punishment in the State schools. With this opinion lam in full agreement. If it is wrong to flog hardened criminals for very grave offences it must be much more so to flog sensitive children who are not hardened, criminal or guilty of anything more serious than defective memories or the high spirits natural to youth. Like Dr. Johnson, who said he was "well flogged” at school, I have few pleasant memories of my own now distant school days, and indeed I still suffer from dlsabflities engendered by the old-time methods. To-day, “teaching with the strap,” or as it used f -o be, the supplejack, is not favoured, and girls especially are no longer subject to the severe corporal punishment that I have seen meted out to them tn front of the class by a teacher without either a sense of justice or the ability to control her easily aroused temper. Certainly a charge of assault can be laid against a teacher who oversteps the majk, but this is merely a nominal safeguard for the children In most cases, as few parents care to bring an action that may, perhaps, react detrimentally to their children’s schooling, even if it does succeed, and in most cases magistrates appear to uphold the teacher’s legal right to inflict punishment rather than the parent’s natural right to protest. Of course, retaliation in kind on the teacher leads to immediate proceedings and heavy punishment in every case, rightly so, perhaps. However, a hopeful sign of the times Is that the Minister of Education in New South Wales has recently decided to abolish corporal punishment in all the schools under his control, and what New South Wales does to-day. Australia does to-morrow, and sometimes even New Zealand follows quit. I have just had the' pleasure of meeting a gentleman who is in every way well qualified to speak with authority on this question. A native of Switzerland, he qualified for his medical degree and is also a doctor of philosophy, which is the degree next above Master of Arts. After travelling extensively, including a residence of six years in Vienna, he came to New Zealand and at present holds an important post under the Department of Education. This officer assures me that corporal punishment has long been abolished from the schools on the Continent and he also told me of his great astonishment to’find that it was still practised in Great Britain and in the Dominions. Perhaps this lag behind the times is to be accounted for by our system of centralisation plus the conservative influence of the Educational Institute, which body was, of course, chiefly instrumental in bringing in bureaucratic control and the extinction of local Education Boards like the old South Canterbury one, which gave good service in its day. Commenting on this. Dr. J. B. Condliffe in his book, “New Zealand in the Making,” observes: “There is a spurious efficiency in centralisation against which educational idealism struggles in vain."

Whatever the cause may be it is certain that there is something very rotten in the state of education in New Zealand to-day. Here we have the most expensive system in the world (the direct cost to us as taxpayers rose from £3,250,000 in 1935-36 to more than £5,500,000 in 1939-40), and yet our young people not only appear in all too many cases to lack in character training, but are quite unable to write, spell or compose a letter to the reasonable satisfaction of a business man or other employer. Complaints from the business community. parents, social workers, magistrates, members of Parliament and others were never more widespread than at the present time. Speaking in the recent Budget debate the Rev. Clyde Carr, who is not only chairman of the Education Committee of the House, but is also the best informed authority on the subject in the present Parliament, said: “I have heard people say, and I agree, that if one teaches a child to read, and what to read, and teaches it enough arithmetic to count its change, that child will educate itself.” Only recently, however, I examined a school timetable and I found ,that for the primary classes (such subjects being almost totally neglected in the secondary departments), 15 minutes was devoted each morning to writing and 10 minutes to spelling, whereas a whole hour was given up in afternoons to arts and crafts and similar subjects. One cannot help but deplore “the one halfpenny of bread to the intolerable deal of sack” in this arrangement which, no doubt, produces “clever little devils” when what we want most of all is good, unselfish citizens. All reform in public affairs must start with electoral reforms and as there is no doubt that the local administration of our education system is extremely faulty, in that the views of parents, who, after all, are the real guardians of their children's physical., moral and intellectual welfare, are not only ignored but largely countered, something should be done.

Our school committees are no longer representative bodies nor have they much Influence, while our Education Boards are all too often largely composed of human fossils and barnacles, whose direct interest in education is nil unless the possession of grandchildren can be said to provide one. At the same time I am well aware that many good men are giving their services to these bodies, but. in the main, Gresham’s law that bad money will drive out good is applicable to them and, as a consequence, we find that there has been a deplorable drop in the general level of administrative ability.—l am, etc., S. P. BRAY. Fairlie. September 7.