Corpun file 12737

Express & Echo, Exeter, 2 February 2004

Looking back to an age when bad behaviour while at school meant a short sharp shock

Have Exeter children changed much in the past 100 years? To find out Mike Byrne took a look at the punishment log for one city school at a time when corporal punishment was the favoured treatment for answering back, insolence - and drinking ink

October 4, 1904, the day the Express & Echo was first published, saw the attendance officer call at Alphington School.

His arrival was noted in the school log which kept track of every event, from sickness to the temperature in the classroom.


And just as important to the everyday running of the school was the punishment book outlining who had been naughty, how they'd been naughty - and what had happened to them.

Here are some extracts from the punishment book for Alphington School.

A Yendall: drinking ink - three on seat.

James Langdon: pricking boy's head with pen - two on hand.

R Selby: unsportsmanlike behaviour in playground - two on back.

S Perkins, E Marles and R Selby: torturing flies - two on hands and one on back.

W Gaydon, K Little and J Delaney: frightening little Mallet with bombs and pistols - two on hands.

J Causely: writing on desk - two strokes on the hand.

May Frost: insolent - two strokes on the hand.

A Elliott: bad writing - two strokes on the hand.

A Causley: Careless and inclined to be obstinate- three stokes on the back.

A Shobrook: laughing in cookery class - two on hand.

J Goodyear: Talking in prayers - two on hand.

HJ Causley: impudence and speaking insolently - put over desk in classroom and several cuts with cane given.

Reg Selby and Colin Males: fighting in playground - three on seat.

James Langdon: tearing girl's apron - two on seat.

As for school life, the day-by-day log book recounts:

October 15 1904: Group II was examined in arithmetic, writing and reading. The work of Standard II was greatly improved although the arithmetic of Standards I, II, and III was careless, especially in subtraction.

October 21: The very unsatisfactory conditions of the drains was brought to the notice of Mr Kepewich and he promised something would be done.

.............

February 28, 1919: The floods are rising rapidly at 1.45am. Only 20 children arrived, all very wet.

March 14: Four cases of suspected chicken pox.

School Report: I am pleased to find Miss Gorley is using simple prayers suited to the baby mind.

May 15: Willie Brewer fell in playground and broke his leg.

Corpun file 13141

The Independent, London, 16 February 2004

Comment

When a scarf is more important than murder

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

(extracts)

Maybe they are right, my Islamicist detractors. I don't have what it takes to be an orthodox Muslim. When I read about "S", a British Muslim girl aged 15 who has chosen to stay at home since 2002 because her school refused to let her wear the jilbab (a long flowing gown), songs of praise did not rise to my lips.

.............

How dispiriting that so many Muslims took to the streets to defend the hijab when there are such pressing matters which need our attention. ............. When are we going to see protests about the hundreds of honour killings of women and girls in Muslim countries? Do we really think that a scarf is more important than the murder of female Muslims?

.............

The French have got their ban, but the repercussions will wash in for many years. Policy makers will be tested in Britain as religious groups increasingly demand to be allowed to opt out of basic rules and principles, a very bad thing indeed for our complicated and often fraught nation which is trying to hold together without falling into the French model of assimilation. More state funding for separate education will be claimed by religious communities and they will be satisfied.

How bizarre that the Government is boldly pushing integrated education in Northern Ireland, while on the mainland, it upholds separatist education. ...........

I discussed this with the School Standards minister David Miliband in Belfast recently. He said that the Government was not going to go the way of France. Good. But are we really saying that there are no limits to what the state will accept? Tolerating all demands is itself discriminatory. Corporal punishment is used in British madarasas where many Muslim children go to learn the Koran. These children are getting less protection than other British children if the state does not impose the same conditions that it does on other schools.

............

COPYRIGHT 2004 Independent Newspapers (UK)Ltd.

Corpun file 13140

Scottish Daily Mail, Glasgow (Scottish edition of Daily Mail, London), 18 February 2004

Comment

Schools nurture a culture of anarchy

(extracts)

ANARCHY in schools, leading to mayhem on the streets: that is the alarming pattern emerging from the failure of public policy with regard to youth in Scotland. The latest figures show that, under a culture of so-called social inclusion, our schools are now battlegrounds.

With corporal punishment and similarly severe sanctions now a distant memory, the ultimate disciplinary weapon at the disposal of headteachers confronted by disruptive pupils is exclusion from school.

But it is being applied so feebly as to be ineffectual. Of the 20,000 pupils excluded per year, 40 per cent require to be excluded at least twice.

And there is a hard core of around 50 pupils who are excluded at least ten times a year.

That makes a mockery of the system. Such hardened recidivists should not be allowed to enter a school building ever again. The reality is that discipline has all but broken down in Scottish schools - once the most admired in the world - with nearly 7,000 attacks on staff in 2002-03. That is not an environment in which education can be imparted even to exemplary pupils.

...........

Two recent cases of motiveless assaults on innocent passers-by by gangs of feral teenagers, reported on our news pages today, illustrate the anarchic nature of the society that is the consequence of Holyrood's politically correct tolerance of the intolerable.

Can we seriously believe that an Executive and parliament that were only narrowly dissuaded by an upsurge of public opinion from passing legislation to jail mothers for smacking toddlers has any political will to curb youth violence? The knee-jerk reaction of ministers and MSPs is to see violent youths as victims, while ignoring the genuine victimhood of those they harass, abuse or assault.

As the two horrific cases reported today show, even able-bodied men in their prime are targets for teenage wolf packs in public places. What does that say about the risk to women and the elderly?

The first duty of government - the very raison d'être for which it was created centuries ago - is to protect the citizen and maintain public order.

When will Jack McConnell acknowledge that responsibility by substituting effective action for opportunist rhetoric?

COPYRIGHT 2004 Solo Syndication Limited