Saturday 3 October 2009

Home Canes



Most people seem to be under the impression that the cane was confined to school life. In some cases, headmasters actively encouraged parents to buy a cane for keeping good discipline at home and I for one viewed this as a very positive way that the school could actively work with parents to promote higher standards of discipline among the boys.

I remember there being a fair degree of concern about the general attitude and behaviour of some of the older day pupils at the prep school that I worked at. It was felt that more needed to be done regarding communication between school and home and this, in turn, revealed just how unaware some parents were of the goings on of their sons at school.

Most parents instantly took on a look of disbelief, then horror and finally wanted to know how their boy had been brought to account. Once it was revealed that they had paid the price through a caning, the parent’s face normally fell back into a calmer look of relief that somebody had ensured he had paid the price for his behaviour. It was during just such a meeting with a parent that the kernel of an idea occurred to me. It was a certain Mrs Dawson, a mother who quite frankly admitted that, during term time and week ends, she felt beleaguered at home, having to cope with three boisterous sons and no father there to offer support.

After hearing how her eldest had been brought to book by myself, a woman, Mrs Dawson turned to me and half jokingly said, “I don’t suppose you’d have a spare cane you could lend me?”

Both of us smiled at what she had just said and left it at that. However, Mrs Dawson had planted a kernel of an idea in my mind and it germinated and grew within me until I could hold it back no more and felt the need to make sure it was replanted in fertile ground.

The Headmaster liked the idea and, within minutes, he was reciting a letter to his secretary that would be sent out to the parents of all pupils aged ten and upwards.

Within a few days, signed order forms and cheques were arriving in the morning post and I was particularly pleased to see that five of these came from the parents of boys in my class including one signed ‘P. Dawson’. Our suppliers were pleasingly efficient and, within a week, a large bundle of rattan canes was delivered as promised and the headmaster’s secretary spent the best part of her afternoon writing boys’ names on brown labels with string and attaching them to the crooked handles of this latest consignment of school canes.

At the end of the day, I handed out the canes to each of the boys along with strict instructions that they had to bring back the labels with their parents’ signature as proof of receipt. Five very subdued-looking young lads left the classroom, each of them carrying their own cane with their name attached to its end.


An After Comment

In many cases, it was Matron who promoted the idea of the school supplying the boys' parents with canes since she was more concerned with their general upbringing and wanted to ensure that boundaries existed both at school AND home in their lives. Moreover, they wanted to make sure that it was the cane in particular that was used as the principal tool of punishment rather than the father's belt since the cane is much less likely to cause actual harm to a boy. Therefore, to a large degree it was Matron's natural concern for the boys in her charge that would lead her to making sure as far as possible that each boy's parents had a cane at their disposal for maintaining the necessary standards of discipline that we required of boys back in those days.

1 comment:

  1. My mum did have a cane; not bought from school, but inherited from my nan, who was a teacher. I got it a few times when I was about 10, so I was used to it before I went to secondary school. Ouch!

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