The last posting, about a childhood friend of mine being slapped, has brought a strong reaction from some people about the physical punishment of children and of corporal punishment in schools which was not prohibited by law in England until 1986. Surprisingly, it was allowed in Welsh schools until as recently as 2022.
Of course, slapping or physically punishing a child in any way, is and was, an awful thing to do but it was a common punishment while I was at school and when I began teaching.
While at school, I was slapped once by a teacher and during my 37-year teaching career, once and only once, did I make physical contact with a pupil.
In my first year as a pupil at Lowestoft Grammar School, I was taught English by the Head of Department, Mr Baker. I was 11 years old when, during a lesson, a girl handed me a piece of paper with the word MENSTRUATION written on it in bold, red capital letters.
“What does that mean?” she asked. I had no idea.
“Ask Mr Baker,” she suggested and thinking nothing of it, I went over to Mr Baker and handed him the paper.
“What does this word mean, sir?” I asked him.
SLAP!
The girl and her friend were sniggering. I still remember the girl’s name and I have a rough idea of where she lives. If revenge is a dish best served cold, 66 years should be long enough.
I have a friend who told me that in the 1960s, when he was at a grammar school in southwest Wales, he was caned. Someone reported to the Headmaster of his school that when he and his girlfriend were on their way home from school, they were “snogging at a bus stop”.
Their crime? They were both in school uniform. How times have changed.
My very first teaching job was at a boys’ secondary modern school. As I wrote in an earlier post, I had never intended to be a teacher and I only went into teaching because the 1969 strawberry crop failed and I was laid off two months earlier than I expected by the Birds Eye Frozen Foods factory in Lowestoft. (CLICK TO SEE)
I knew it was going to be a tough place to teach because I had been playing cricket for two seasons with a teacher at that school and he had told me many stories about assaults on pupils by staff and vice versa.
So, it was with some trepidation that I started there on September 9th,1969.
At 8.15, I went to the Headmaster’s office and met my Head of Department and Mr McNab, the Headmaster.
“Assert yourself right from the start,” I was told. “The first chance or reason you have, thump one of them good and hard. Show them you’re not someone to be messed with.”
I went to my first class. 35 boys about 14 years old, were in a noisy throng outside the locked classroom. As I tried to unlock the door, I was impeded and jostled by a large, thuggy looking boy who then made derogatory comments about my jacket.
As I bent over to unlock the door, he pushed my arm so that the key missed the keyhole. Boys laughed and jeered. I turned to face the boy and pushed him away as hard as I could, making contact on his upper arm.
“I’m going to tell Mr McNab what you did,” he yelled at me and stormed off. I thought that I’d better go and put my side of things and so I followed him.
I was behind the boy in a corridor towards the Head’s office, thinking that this was probably not the ideal way to begin a teaching career, especially as I hadn’t even set foot in a classroom yet, when we saw Mr McNab walking towards us.
McNab was a Glaswegian with an accent so rough that knives could be sharpened on it and 20 years earlier, he had boxed for the army in the Combined Services Championship.
“This teacher just punched me,” the boy wailed.
“Was it a punch or a push?” asked Mr McNab.
“A punch,” said the boy.
Then, McNab punched him in the chest so hard that he sent him flying, knocking him to the ground. He ended up sitting on the corridor floor, looking up at the Head with a look of shocked surprise and some apprehension.
“Was it like that?” asked Mr McNab.
“Yes,” mumbled the boy.
“Well, that was a push.”
