GP's who are teachers not being remorseful for corporal punishment

[maratara]

I have recently found out that my MIL and FIL who were both primary school teachers ( so up to 12yo max) have both caned children who were badly behaved when they were teaching in the 70's and 80's. It has blown my mind. I burst into tears - I have left all my 4 children with them alone at various times . I had no idea. They think it was just the times, and I am overreacting and I don't understand how things were. This is not that long ago though really! And nobody had a gun to their head to hit a child.

I think they were bullies who used a power imbalance to hit a child with a stick.
Needless to say our relationship has taken a bad turn. I really liked them until now - been with their son for close to 20 years but only found out about this 2 days ago.
What would you do?
My youngest is 11 so it's easy to say he just doesn't want to stay at Grandma's anymore in the holidays for a night. Other children are adults so would never stay the night - just come to family gatherings and things.

What do other people think?

Grow up and get over yourself.

It used to be normal, you are overreacting OP. And you must admit that behaviour in schools has massively deteriorated in the past few years.

Even if it wasn't used much, the threat was there and prevented a lot of poor behaviour.
You can't judge the past by today's values. You only have to look at some threads on here about out of control children and teens, to realize that many parents are getting things wrong.

I'm not advocating bringing back corporal punishment, but I do think that a lot of today's parents are failing to properly discipline their children.

@CorylusAgain

I’d say the being groped by teachers was more serious really, with the benefit of hindsight!

AllOfThemWitches · 31/08/2023 13:36
How do some of you feel about adult men sleeping with underage girls because that was also the done thing 'back in the day?'”

It most certainly was not the done thing! I was born in the early 60s. Word got round on our estate that a new resident was a “kiddy fiddler” (most working class people weren’t familiar with “paedophile ” then) when I was around 5 years old. I can remember the adults talking about him. He was hounded from the estate.
Celebrities have always been a law unto themselves.

That's as maybe with really young kids. But I can think of many examples from the 70s and 80s that show many men considered girls age 14 upwards fair game, and unless there was actual physical coercion, the police agreed.

I was at primary school 1959 to 1966 then at secondary school until 1973 and caning was so rare I think I only heard of it happening once in all that time.

I taught in London and Derbyshire during the 80s and corporal punishment was banned in both places. I think your in-laws must have been quite unusual.

School specific. My first primary school (1962 - 1965) have no memory of corporal punishment at all. Then moved to another school (1965 - 1968) where kids just got canned all the time for virtually anything. Same education authority, just other side of the same town.

How many times do I have to say that I am ashamed of crying. I hope you feel better about yourself.

at senior school the head master used to wear a black gown, i am sure he did -
not like nowadays.

i think op if this were a male dominated forum the answers might be different, as it was mainly boys who received corporal punishment.

when your dc were younger did your pil ever threaten or suggest hitting them?

Stopped in Scotland in the 80s!

Scotland 1982 for state schools. It might have been a lot later for private schools.

I remember watching Newround years later when the were talking about the cane being banned in England.

@CorylusAgain

Hitting children really was commonplace, so commonplace that the threat of being hit was enough to make children think twice about behaviour. Children were familiar with the spectacle of classmates being hit.

There was only one teacher who used the ruler in all my years in school (an all girls prinary) on the open palm. I never experienced it physically myself, but the threat of it was always there in that particular classroom and by extension in subsequent years.

The idea of making an example of children who stepped out of line 'pour encourager les autres' was probably the reasoning behind it.

I agree with a PP's comment that it was probably much more of a thing in boys' schools. I have cousins who still remember the cruel treatment they and their classmates received in all-boy schools. My dad and all his brothers went to boarding school but didn't send their own children to board, all thanks to memories of the liberal application of the cane. Yes, people did object - but the complaints of people without money or clout were dismissed as lack of gratitude for education and evidence of uppityness/ getting beyond their station.

It wasn't just physical cruelty that was practiced in schools. Sneering, sarcasm, belittling, humiliation, and various other forms of torture were employed. The relationship between teachers and students was very often mutually adversarial.

I'd be similarly shocked and disgusted.

Don't be embarrassed about your reaction - it's just an automatic, shocked reaction at their partaking in physical abuse of children. Just because it was common didn't mean they had to do it.

However, what's past is past and I'd try to draw a line under it and move on. They've seen from your instinctive reaction how shocking you find it so probably no more need for discussion of it.