Teachers - would YOU be prepared to use a cane?

[Greensleeves]

Inspired by Hulababy's fantastic post on the other thread

SURELY this could never work, because teachers would refuse? I don't know any teachers IRL who would be happy to hit a child with a stick and would be surprised to meet someone who would.

Wouldn't teachers protest/walk out/take some sort of group action to prevent this from happening in our schools? Please, tell me society can't actually go backwards!

I was a teacher and disagree with CP. If a known trouble making child violently assaulted my DC I would want the DC rehabilitiated. Children are not violent for no reason-most probably they already come from a violent home. If you hit a DC it just gives the message that violence gets you what you want-i.e. I can hit you because I am bigger and stronger.
I don't think that CP would make any difference to rioters-except to make them more angry with society.

There never was the golden age where DCs were caned and did as they were told. I was reading the log book of a Victorian school. It wasn't always the case of the DC being caned and then in trouble again at home. There was one case where a boy was caned and the father came up to attack the teacher-apparently he had told his son that if he was hit at school he was to hit back. In another the mother went straight to the vicar and the governors and made a huge fuss.
The same DCs were generally caned on a regular basis and the same ones never got the cane-that alone should tell you that it was a complete failure.

Apart form anything else-if it was brought back I can't see any teacher willing to hit DCs. I have never hit anyone and I am not about to start.

Hi EndoplasmicReticulum (Strange avatar!)

If my child had assaulted anyone, I would want the full sanction used, especially if it was the cane!

When I taught in my first job, I reported a boy who had not come to detention and the DH said, 'Right, I'll cane him'.

I was horrified, especially when I heard that he'd been abducted and sexually assaulted the year before. He was dragged screaming down the corridor.

A few months later my colleague and 'friend' got a girl caned and was so chuffed about it I couldn't talk to her again.

'It's a deterrent' they kept saying. So why were the same kids caned again and again?

That school was like something out of Dickens and I got out as soon as I could.

Any DC who assaults another is a problem DC-they don't do it from a normal, loving home. They may need professional help and the best place isn't a mainstream class. Hitting them isn't going to solve any problems.

tectime - it's not that strange, I'm a Biology teacher.

I think you'd be in the minority of parents, wanting the school to cane their children. I certainly wouldn't be happy if they wanted to cane mine.

I agree with SheCutOffTheirTails about finding a more appropriate setting to educate those children who are too "dangerous" for mainstream school. Honestly can't see how hitting them teaches that violence is wrong.

NO!

I wouldn't put up with mine being caned-how can you possibly teach a DC that violence is always wrong with that as an example?!

No - and could not send one of my class out to someone else ( headteacher ?) to be caned.
If a stranger (teacher) caned my child I would be devastated.

Exoticfruits, surely such a child needs to know that if they breach any uncivilised boundaries that they will be punished by CP. Also, labelling the cane as "violence" gives the impression of wanton violence. It is controlled CP.

I had been physically bullied at school in my teen years; it affected my esteem, work and personal relationships and yes there were occasions when I received the cane. But, I received the cane for breaching existing rules and this fear ensured that I stayed on the straight and narrowed, and it ultimately led me undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Soft-soaping me would have led me down a different route in life.

Shocked to read this thread. No wonder so many children I know are terrors nowadays. Happy for caning in school if my children ever dared assault another child or was disrespectful towards anyone. It has to be done within reason and calmly, i.e. not when the teacher has lost his/her temper or if you know child is having issues like health problems, parents separating etc.

I'm a teahcher and I would leave my school if caning were allowed. I would also take my own dc out of school if it were allowed in theirs.

Where is teh evidence that behaviour is worse in society now than it was when caning was allowed?

Schools would be scary places if they were manned solely by teachers who were willing to use the cane. However, I don't know one that is...and if it were to come to pass (it won't) I would rescind my memberships and change professions, as would every teacher I have discussed this with.

Having worked in a very tough school I can say this. Humiliating and dominating a child will only have one of two effects. Either the child will be subdued and sulky as a result, which may make them temporarily easier to deal with but in the long term will do nothing to foster trust or create a safe environment for learning. Or, they will fight violence with violence and turn on the person beating them. Are either of these results desirable? Not to me.

I genuinely don't believe anyone half rational can think that showing children that adults use violence to solve problems is going to discourage them from using violence? How does that 'logic' even work?

Violence against children is considered the lowest of the low in society, why we want to encourage it in schools and encourage those who are happy to perpetrate it to become teachers I don't know.

My DH was at school in the 1970's when caning was allowed. One sadistic teacher caned most of his class when they could not memorise the words to the Jabberwocky poem. The same teacher was later convicted and imprisoned for physically assaulting his wife. Only very cruel people hurt children.

I would disagree entirely tectime-I would have gone right off the straight and narrow if I had been caned-I would be so resentful and angry.
Noone has ever hit me in my entire life and I haven't hit anyone. I spend my life saying to DCs that violence isn't the answer to anything, there is no point in it because eventually you have to talk so you may as well talk in the first place.
I know that my uncle was caned as a DC-one particular teacher didn't like him. It gave him a stammer for life-he never got rid of it.

DCs are very vulnerable member of society-to hit them to get them to conform because you are bigger and able to just beggars belief. I never understood why nuns did it. I would bet that the category who would get caned the most would be the looked after DCs in the care of the state-it is abhorrent-I get so angry just thinking that anyone could possibly think it acceptable.

I don't know why we are even debating it-I can't think of a single teacher who would be willing. I would like to work with disadvantaged DCs-but certainly not so that I can say 'do as I say or I will hit you with a stick'.

(x primary)

I taught both in leafy wealthy suburbs and in deeply deprived inner city areas. Without exception those dcs who behaved appallingly either came from highly distrubed and disturbing dysfunctional backgrounds or had special needs / learning disabilities (or usually both).

Physically injuring a child who either does not have the capacity to conform to behaviour norms or who comes from a home where they are unloved and who has already become inured to abuse will not incentivise them to 'behave'.

There are better ways.

There are always DCs in the leafy suburbs who behave appallingly but, as Slambang says, there is always a reason. You can live in a house that costs over half a million, have a pony and 2 holidays a year and still be from a deeply dysfunctional family. You need to deal with the cause of the behaviour-not merely suppress it with violence.

Not in a million years would I hit a pupil. Also, do these people who are in favour of the cane not realise that any kid who was badly-behaved enough to warrant a caning would not be very likely to just stand there and meekly let a teacher hit them? They would hit back.

We are taught when we train to be teachers about modelling. We model expectations for the work the children do, we model good manners and respect. If we then use that position to model violence we are on a very slippery slope. How confusing a message it would be to say to a child: 'You hit x pupil. You shouldn't hit people...so I'm going to hit you with this stick.' I just don't get it, I certainly wouldn't do it and I don't know anyone who would.

I work with a lot of children (primary) who experience domestic violence. We are constantly telling them what is acceptable and unacceptable from an adult so that they don't think being beaten is 'normal' and know to tell us if these things are happening. To tell a child: 'You should not be beaten at home. It is wrong for anyone to touch your body in a way that hurts you or makes you feel uncomfortable or unhappy' and then hit them ourselves is a disasterous idea. How would they ever trust us again?

No no no no no no no.

I don't tell my students to shut up, let alone consider hitting them with a stick.

Children do as you do, they never do as you say.
How bizarre to tell a DC that they are not to hit another DC and then hit them as punishment!!

Nope.
I did smack a pupil once for trying to get themselves killed on a massively busy road, but that was an emergency measure to bring them up short so I could get them into safe situation without endangering the rest of the group. I decided I'd rather lose my job over it than see a child killed under a lorry. Luckily the boss and the child's parents were entirely OK about it, and the parents took measures to deal with the rampantly bad behaviour etc so the situation didn't arise again.
But other than in very extreme situations, I don't think it helps and there's no point, so I can't see a situation other than a life and death one where I would even consider it.

Absolutely not. I have taught secondary science for 11 years and it has never even entered my head! I spend vast amounts of time maintaining a calm, purposeful classroom. Like someone said above, we model good manners and generally how to be respectful and polite.

I would never raise a hand to my own dd, and DH and I agreed to this long before she was even conceived. How could I hit another person's child?

IME the best teachers (and schools) are the ones who rarely even shout. It is perfectly possible to be strict by giving clear boundaries and ALWAYS following through on consequences, of which there are plenty without resorting to CP.

As an aside, CP must have gone before I was at secondary school as I just can't even imagine it e.g. when older colleagues talk about it from their own school days I'm just

www.empowermentresources.com/info2/childrenlearn.html

Tectime, I am with you up to the highlighted words:
"Exoticfruits, surely such a child needs to know that if they breach any uncivilised boundaries that they will be punished by CP."

Every child needs to know that if they breach agreed norms of behaviour then there will be agreed consequences, escalated according to the level of the problem. We also, as a society and as schools, need to know that extreme behaviour almost always comes from a much more deep-seated issue than a 'one off decision to be naughty on that day' and that as well as punishment there needs to be significant effort (from school, family and appropriate outside agencies if necessary) to find and address that underlying issue.

Good discipline comes from fair and consistent expectations and inevitable and agreed consequences - and from a teacher who models exactly what he / she expects from the pupils all the time. It does not follow that the 'consequences' have to be physical violence ('controlled violence' is still violence).