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?

I saw kids being belted at school in the 70s and 80s, sometimes for very minor infractions. It was wrong and very upsetting to witness and I don’t blame you for losing respect for them on that score. Children should not be hit.

I was smacked by my parents and I also think that was wrong, they should not have done it. They were the adults and should have exercised more self control. Not everyone was hitting kids in the 70s even though it was widely accepted.

You can’t change history, I’m afraid. The ranting over biscuits though - is this a new thing? Just a one off or have there been other incidents of shouting?

@nameitagain
Again, where is your evidence that highly respected organisations recommended it? I did my PGCE at the Institute of Education in the early seventies and it was never recommended as a punishment then. It was regarded as old fashioned and an example of the bad old days.
It is never mentioned in all the girls story books of the fifties and sixties because it was never used ( St Clare's, Mallory Towers, Chalet School etc)

You are over reacting massively.
I was at primary in the 70s in London. Corporal punishment wasn’t often used and no cane but other methods occasionally employed.
I remember once going to a male teacher during lunch break in the playground to complain that a boy( I STILL reset the boy’s name) had stolen my football. Teacher picked boy up, slung him over his shoulder and smacked his bottom a few time and put him back down🤷🏻‍♀️

I believe that most parents back in the day also supported corporate punishment. So the child would have got a wack when they got home. My mother smacked both my sister and I - we still talk and have a great relationship with her. Did she smack my children - absolutely no way!

I was at primary in the 70s- went to a few schools- this was not normal. I never heard of it or experienced it thank god. And if I had my parents would have gone bonkers. So not normal

Quite. I was at school in the 60s and 70s and never heard of anyone being caned, knuckles rapped, or indeed any sort of corporal punishment.

Agree with this

But you sound traumatised by this. Do you lead a particularly sheltered life? (geniune question)
I get its unpallatable but almost everyone (certainly everyone i know in their 50s and up) was beaten as a child. Many women i know that age were at some point beaten as adults too. It was also legal to beat and rape your wife until fairly recently.

Yanbu OP. How can anyone compare it to driving a diesel car, honestly- it's psychologically so different.

Imagine having a frightened child in front of you. You'd have to turn off a bit of your brain - the compassion bit - to then deliberately inflict pain on them. I'm not convinced that you could turn that bit of your brain on again. And the fact your FIL is still proud of it, kind of backs that up.

The one step removed bit is important. Of course we shouldn't buy trainers made by kids in sweatshops. But many people don't know, or forget, that's how they're made. It's not the same psychologically as the factory foreman actually watching those children suffer.

I mean corporal punishment was considered normal and was recommended within society. It was considered appropriate to teach that there were consequences. It was around the late1960s that attitudes with research began to change but obviously it takes time for attitudes to change. There are still people who think adhd is just bad parenting and poor behaviour. It beggars belief but changes in attitude take time. In the 70s of course attitudes were that corporal punishment was normal

My DM trained and then taught as a primary school teacher in the 70s (and in different parts of the country) and told me that this was well on the way out and she never used it. I started school before 1986 and certainly never saw any corporal punishment. I don't think it was normal by this point and it was not acknowledged as good practise for upcoming teachers.

I think it's maybe a bit hysterical just the fact they did it but if there's no recognition that in retrospect it was wrong and that times were changing anyway then I would also have issue with that.

My mum did spank me, sometimes rarely, when I was little. She was horrendously abused as a child, as were some of her siblings, and didn't know how to do discipline. Now she feels so bad and has told me (unprompted by me) that she'd never do that to my kids.

It'd be different if your PIL were upfront about it when your DS was a baby, and laid out their principles from the start. You'd know where you stood then.

Even if they've never actually hit your son, I can see why you'd feel uncomfortable because they've got rid of that natural compassion barrier in their brain, stopping them from hurting a smaller, defenceless thing. Like kicking a puppy.

We had teachers who regularly hit kids
still in touch with 3,who are now friends
kids now are entitled to behave any way they like with no sanction or disadvantage

I read your OP and thought you were overreacting, but having thought about it some more, I'd say that it's one thing to know that it happened in a kind of abstract way but quite another to imagine someone you know personally actually carrying out the act. My parents were teachers and I'd be quite shocked and upset by the idea of them doing this.

it happened in the 1970s

Absolutely agree. I was at school in the 80s and remember a couple of boys being slippered, probably just as it was being phased out/prohibited.
Also agree that it was commonplace in my parents' generation.

a boy was hit on the bottom over the desk in my primary around 1976
another boy had a black board rubber chucked at him, by the teacher.

I'm with you OP. I'm sorry you're receiving a lot of criticism from other posters but I would be upset if I found this out about older adults in my family.

Same here!

Yes, different times but doesn't mean we have to like it or condone it in our times, particularly when it is so close in time.

I don't think your initial reaction is over the top. I went to 3 different primary schools in the 1980s. Nobody was ever hit in any way, it would have been shocking to see.

If I found out someone I knew and liked had previously done this I would be shocked and disappointed in them too and might well have cried. It would be such a fundamental change to how I think of them.

Realised I've quoted the wrong post.

Meant to respond to @pilates post and say I agreed. My excuse is I'm not well and not had much sleep! 😵‍💫🫣

I was smacked at school in the 70s, I viewed it as wrong and another boy got a slipper. This was a bog standard, working class south london primary school

But it was normal, no point moaning to my mum and dad because its just what happened in those days. In fact it was the head teacher who caught me swinging through the coat racks, not sure why that was quite so wrong but I got a smack on the legs for it.

I think if people are around from those days they wouldnt do that sort of thing now, peoples perception of whats right and wrong change over time, despite the modern day narrative that rights and wrongs are fixed entities for all time (they are not)

i just read that corporal punishment was banned in 1986! 1982 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that such punishment could no longer be administered without parental consent, ... and private schools not until 1998.
i thought it was earlier

anyway, they were teachers in that era, i think you are over reacting

You are punishing them (including planning to lie about your 11 year old) for something that happened 40/50 years ago that was normal at the time. This despite you having no concerns during the 20 years you e known them.

Things change back in the 70s racism homophobia misogyny was meat for comedy shows on TV.

I do think you’re being way OTT but I think that’s because you didn’t live in those times, so understandably it is quite shocking for you.

Detentions didn’t exist, so the slipper or cane was used (for boys) but it was EXTREMELY rare in the schools I went to.

Girls had to stand outside the headmasters office.

As you know different methods are used now; detentions, exclusion and isolation etc.

Interesting though how these days there is more of a lack of respect and a lack of respect for authority.