Recently there has been some discussion over whether or not the cane should be brought back into schools. There was a survey a few months ago where one in five teachers thought that corporal punishment should be brought back to schools in extreme cases. In this survey (Times Educational Survey) of 6,162 teachers, approximately 20% of teachers backed caning. However, there seem to be more in favour in secondary schools as 22% of teachers here back it with only 16% in primary schools. There are even fewer in favour with the heads of schools and deputy heads where 12% were in favour of bringing back the cane to schools.

As I sat down for dinner a few weeks back with my parents and some of their friends we began to discuss whether or not the cane should be brought back into schools. From their stories it seemed on the surface that the cane worked and that it seemed to sort discipline out in schools. For example, if you forgot your homework once and you received the cane you would apparently never forget it again, so it seemed to act as a deterrent. On the other hand, perhaps we could say that discipline has swung from one end of the spectrum to the other in this country. So is some sort of corporal punishment a good thing to have in schools? However, how would the cane be monitored? What would you give it for? And who would administer it?

Another problem with the cane besides the immediate effects of it and how we would go about introducing it is that we don’t know the psychological problems that are associated with it. Do we really know how the cane affected younger children when it was given 20 years ago? In the long run did it really help the behaviour of children especially if those children were special needs children? Or did it just instil fear of teachers into children perhaps not allowing them to learn to their full ability?

Yesterday I was reading about a case in India where a young girl with special needs couldn’t say her alphabet. Her teacher, as her punishment, hit her head against the table and then made her stand outside in the boiling sun for two hours. Later that day the young girl died. Obviously this is an extreme example but at the end of the day does anyone really have the right to hit a child?

Do you think the cane should be brought back into schools?

By Community Correspondent Harriet Page.