[47][48], Legislation also varies among states and territories with regard to corporal punishment meted out to children in other care settings. It had been very regularly used on both boys and girls in certain schools for centuries prior to the ban. [121][122], Caning, usually applied to the palm or clothed bottom, is a common form of discipline in Malaysian schools. (7) National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers. Article 17 states: "(1) No child shall be subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment. It depended partly on who was allowed to use the cane: in some places all teachers were permitted to do so, while other schools restricted it to the head and deputy head, or perhaps to senior teachers or heads of department only. According to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, "Children do not lose their human rights by virtue of passing through the school gates the use of corporal punishment does not respect the inherent dignity of the child nor the strict limits on school discipline". "[114], Corporal punishment in Italian schools was banned in 1928. Around 60% of children aged 214 years regularly suffer physical punishment by their parents or other caregivers. [132], Caning and other forms of corporal punishment in schools was abolished in 1920. The caning of sixth-formers (up to and including age 18) was much less common, but by no means unknown, as in this 1959 grammar-school case and at two Croydon boys' schools as late as the early 1980s. R (Williamson) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment (2005) was an unsuccessful challenge to the prohibition of corporal punishment contained in the Education Act 1996, by several headmasters of private Christian schools who argued that it was a breach of their religious freedom. In some Middle Eastern countries whipping is used. Costello-Roberts v United Kingdom a payoff from the government to withdraw the case. In fact it had no such effect, and the Head Teachers' union advised its members to continue to be "cautious" about using CP on girls. (See list of countries, below.). argue that it provides an immediate response to indiscipline so that the student is quickly back in the classroom learning, unlike suspension from school. According to the Children and Adolescents Code, "The child and adolescent has the right to good treatment, comprising a non-violent upbringing and education Any physical, violent and humiliating punishment is prohibited". WebCorporal punishment is illegal in schools in a total of 132 countries. Another example is this 1937 appeal hearing, in which a headmaster's conviction for assault was overturned, even though the caned boy was said in evidence to be severely bruised. Joe The King: 1999 Joe is spanked on his bare bum over his teachers lap in front of his class. Corporal punishment in Norwegian schools was strongly restricted in 1889, and was banned outright in 1936. was the traditional command to a pupil about to receive posterial discipline, but there was no consensus across different schools as to how this should be done. (6) NUT's main rival, the more male-dominated NASUWT,(7) campaigned aggressively in favour of keeping the cane. Others, though, including probably most politicians and "experts", will still defend abolition as the right decision on balance, or at least as inevitable under European human-rights legislation. [192], In state-run schools, and in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was outlawed by the British Parliament on 22 July 1986, following a 1982 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that such punishment could no longer be administered without parental consent, and that a child's "right to education" could not be infringed by suspending children who, with parental approval, refused to submit to corporal punishment. At least one (Bradford) laid down that the punishment must follow as soon as possible after the offence. Text of England and Wales law banning corporal punishment in all schools Then in 1977/78 came the National Union of School Students, marginally longer-lasting but scarcely any more representative of pupils generally. Because Scotland has its own distinct education system with different traditions, there is a separate article about CP in Scottish schools. 18 required the act to be done in private; 10 mandated a witness to be present. "Pants-down" punishment, not unknown in some private schools, was almost unheard of in the state sector in relatively modern times, especially from the 1960s onwards. The boy's mother removed him from the school shortly afterwards, but persisted with this legal action, which must have cost the taxpayer many thousands of pounds. Other things being equal, each stroke of the cane was probably therefore sharper in its effect than in the days when trousers were made of wool and underpants of heavy flannel. In 2011 another survey found that half of parents and 19% of students also wanted to bring back the cane. [13], Britain itself outlawed the practice in 1987 for state schools[14][15][16] and more recently, in 1998, for all private schools.[17][18]. An equivalent law for Scotland came into force in 2000. Locke's work was highly influential, and may have helped influence Polish legislators to ban corporal punishment from Poland's schools in 1783. U. L. Rev. [citation needed], Much of the traditional culture that surrounds corporal punishment in school, at any rate in the English-speaking world, derives largely from British practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly as regards the caning of teenage boys. Some (Barnet, Brent, Clwyd, Derbyshire, Mid-Glamorgan, Oxfordshire) forbade the caning of girls other than on their hands while explicitly stating that boys could be disciplined either on the hands or on the clothed buttocks. WebEuropean Court of Human Rights. According to an amendment to the Code on Children and Adolescents 1990, "Children and Adolescents are entitled to be educated and cared for without the use of physical punishment or cruel or degrading treatment as forms of correction, discipline, education or any other pretext". [196] The regular depiction of caning in British novels about school life from the 19th century onwards, as well as movies such as If., which includes a dramatic scene of boys caned by prefects, contributed to the French perception of caning as being central to the British educational system. Around 80% of the boys and 60% of the girls were punished by teachers using their hands, sticks, straps, shoes, punches, and kicks as most common methods of administration. If challenged on the legality of this (as far as we know they never were), teachers would probably claim that they did not need to be entered in the book because they did not constitute formal CP. It campaigned more against unofficial and irregular CP, as in this Aug 1977 report and this May 1978 one, than against CP as a whole. "[146], Article 89 of the Pakistan Penal Code does not prohibit actions, such as corporal punishment, subject to certain conditions (that no "grievous hurt" be caused, that the act should be done in "good faith", the recipient must be under 12 etc.). WebNew laws which came into force at midnight allow mild smacking but criminalise any physical punishment which causes visible bruising. WebSchool corporal punishment: The High School Cane: a Eulogy, a thoughtful comment on the cane's usefulness and efficacy in keeping mischievous teenage schoolboys in order, Several more Labour-controlled LEAs followed suit in the early 1980s. He went on to observe that "nature provided a special place for boys to be punished upon and it should be used". In the UK, this is a state high school for boys aged 11 and over. (5) But the traditional grammar schools, like most of the independent schools, would generally have used the birch until the mid- to late 19th century. The number of strikes must not be more than four for each occurrence. Approximately 69 countries still allow for corporal punishment in schools, including parts of the United States and many countries in Africa and Asia. [92], Corporal punishment was prohibited in the public schools in Copenhagen Municipality in 1951 and by law in all schools of Denmark on 14 June 1967. In this 1894 court case, a clearly out-of-control teacher was successfully prosecuted and fined for assault. Its use by ordinary teachers in grammar schools had been outlawed in 1928. The court held that three whacks on the buttocks through shorts with a rubber-soled gym shoe, applied by the headmaster in private, did not constitute inhuman or degrading punishment. Quite a few primary schools, like quite a few secondary schools (though by no means all), chose to exempt girls entirely from all these kinds of punishment, even where boys received it rather often. Some 20% of secondary schools did so in the 1970s, according to informal guesstimates by STOPP. 1992 judgment by the Human Rights Court about a seven-year-old who was slippered at a boarding prep school. There was the odd exception like Northwich Girls' Grammar School; but even there, the formidable Miss Janet Dines claimed she had hardly used the cane in ten years before the event that got her into all the newspapers in 1976. [193][194] In other private schools, it was banned in 1998 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland). Only two LEAs laid down a maximum number of strokes (East Sussex, 3 strokes; Durham, 6 strokes). Corporal punishment used to be prevalent in schools in many parts of the world, but in recent decades it has been outlawed in 128 countries including all of Europe, most of South America, as well as in Canada, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand and several other countries. All that was the situation as at 1979. In many countries, like Thailand, where the corporal punishment of students is technically illegal, it remains widespread and accepted in practice (for both boys and girls). Manchester Grammar School was exceptional in going back from caning to birching in 1904 and in 1907 staunchly defending the practice as greatly preferable to caning. The school should have a register where date, reason, name of pupil and of administering teacher, together with the number of strikes, is to be recorded. In the case of Christian Education South Africa v Minister of Education the Constitutional Court rejected a claim that the constitutional right to religious freedom entitles private Christian schools to impose corporal punishment. 447 (2002); Deana A. Pollard, Banning Child Corporal Punishment, 77 Tul. At all events, I have to say that after over an hour's careful perusal I put this document down feeling completely unconvinced that these private schools should be prevented by law from mildly spanking their students when necessary, if that is what the parents want. [123][124][125] There have been reports of students being caned in front of the class/school for lateness, poor grades, being unable to answer questions correctly or forgetting to bring a textbook. [112] Teachers were not liable to criminal prosecution until 1997, when the rule of law allowing "physical chastisement" was explicitly abolished. Campbell and Cosans case [128][129] The cane is applied on the students' buttocks, calves or palms of the hands in front of the class. So too is this 1945 case in which a bare-bottom slippering at a prep school was held not to be excessive or unreasonable. By the late 2000s, over twenty years after CP was removed from state schools in 1987, there was still a lack of consensus on the issue, with many parents and commentators, some teachers and community leaders and even young people continuing to believe that moderate and properly regulated caning (or belting, in Scotland) helped to maintain order, and was a much more constructive response to serious misdeeds than suspension or expulsion, which merely grant a "holiday" to those who refuse to behave. As reported in these February 2005 news items, the highest court in the land dismissed their claims, upholding government and parliament in the 1998 blanket prohibition of all and any school CP. [115] This decision repealed section 7 of article 27 of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance 1944, which provided a defence for the use of corporal punishment in childrearing, and stated that "the law imposes an obligation on state authorities to intervene in the family unit and to protect the child when necessary, including from his parents. Article 34 of the Law on Education 2012 states that students have the right to "(9) respect for human dignity, protection from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury personality, the protection of life and health"; article 43(3) states that "discipline in educational activities is provided on the basis of respect for human dignity of students and teachers" and "application of physical and mental violence to students is not allowed. There is no federal law addressing corporal punishment in public or private schools. Attempts to push through local bans in Cardiff (1968) and Liverpool had both collapsed in the face of hostility from head teachers. In Tyrer v.UK the Court held that the judicial birching of a 15 year-old boy breached his right to protection from degrading punishment.In the following two decades the Court condemned school corporal punishment, first in They are, in chronological order by year of provincial ban:[citation needed], Corporal punishment in China was officially banned after the Communist Revolution in 1949. (2) Whoever contravenes the provisions of sub-section (1) shall be liable to disciplinary action under the service rules applicable to such person." We are solemnly informed that the caning brought tears to his eyes and that he was in severe pain for an hour -- well, that is actually the object of the exercise! [19] In addition, the Article 336 (since 2006) of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation states that "the use, including a single occurrence, of educational methods involving physical and/or psychological violence against a student or pupil" shall constitute grounds for dismissal of any teaching professional. Black students are two to three times as likely as their white peers to experience corporal punishment, and boys make up about 80% of those subjected to the practice. [171][184][185][186][187], In Uganda, it is common practice for teachers to attempt to control large, overcrowded classes by corporal punishment. Application No. CP in girls-only schools was, by all accounts, very rare. However, teachers in New Zealand schools had the right to use what the law called reasonable force to discipline students, mainly with a strap, cane or ruler, on the bottom or the hand. The National Policy for Children 2013 states that in education, the state shall "ensure no child is subjected to any physical punishment or mental harassment" and "promote positive engagement to impart discipline so as to provide children with a good learning experience". As far as I know, this is what the 1986 legislation already said, so perhaps this was just a consolidating act. Common reasons for punishment include talking in class, not finishing homework, mistakes made with classwork, fighting, and truancy. "Bend over!" As far as is known, corporal punishment was nowhere systematically made a matter of choice either for parents or students, as is nowadays routine in some American schools. [76], Corporal punishment in all settings, including schools, was prohibited in Brazil in 2014. Underwear, too, got briefer and more lightweight as fashions changed. In Scotland, it was banned in 2000, and in Northern Ireland in 2003. [222] Students can be physically punished from kindergarten to the end of high school, meaning that even legal adults who have reached the age of majority are sometimes spanked by school officials. A REPORT AFTER THE INNER LONDON EDUCATION AUTHORITY'S BAN OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN ITS SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Some teachers required students to touch their toes, as illustrated on the front cover of the STOPP booklet shown above; this presented a particularly taut target (too much so, according to some practitioners), but it had the disadvantage of lacking stability -- the recipient might fall forwards with nothing to hold on to. The Cane and the Tawse in Scottish Schools To me, this decision seems perverse. [UPDATE: This is more or less what later happened in Williamson, the "Christian schools" case, see above.]. Corporal punishment is also unlawful in private schools in Iowa and New Jersey. And corporal punishment continued in some places for a long But this was unusual, and the great majority of slipperings in British schools are believed to have gone unrecorded. Corporal punishment in Greek primary schools was banned in 1998, and in secondary schools in 2005. Covers the UK only, with a major emphasis on school CP but also some interesting material about judicial and military juvenile punishments of the past. Another marked difference from the private sector is that very few state schools in the modern era allowed prefects (selected senior pupils) to administer CP. European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, 25 March 1993", "The States Where Teachers Can Still Spank Students", "Prohibition of all corporal punishment in Venezuela (2007)", "Promoting positive discipline in school", VIET NAM BRIEFING FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW 5th session, 2008, "Hanoi in shock after teacher beats primary school students for being late - VnExpress International", "SCHOOL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: video clips: Vietnam - caning of schoolgirls", "SCHOOL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: video clips: Vietnam - caning of secondary boys and girls", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=School_corporal_punishment&oldid=1136396437, Articles with Spanish-language sources (es), All articles with bare URLs for citations, Articles with bare URLs for citations from March 2022, Articles with PDF format bare URLs for citations, CS1 Chinese (Malaysia)-language sources (zh-my), Articles with dead external links from July 2021, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2009, Articles lacking reliable references from March 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions, This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 03:29. [Source Global Initiative to End All Corporate Punishment of Children]. A feature article including a table of "The top 50 CP schools". However, there was one element of "voluntary CP" at some state boys' schools, like Maidenhead Grammar School (as also at some independent schools, such as Emanuel School in London), where it was understood that a student who had accumulated other punishments, such as detentions or impositions, could present himself at the headmaster's office and apply to be "swished" instead. The case for indignation on the part of the boy seems somewhat undermined by the evidence that he "subsequently showed off the marks of his punishment to other boys with pride". In 2006, Taiwan made corporal punishment in the school system illegal. [19] Certainly a hard slippering of several whacks would be eye-wateringly more painful than a feeble caning, and could leave the student's backside bruised for some days. The dissenting judges argued that the ritualised nature of the punishment, given after several days and without parental consent, should qualify it as "degrading punishment".[218]. to the head teacher and those specifically delegated by him or her. WebThe movie is set in a girl's high school, where the teachers liberally dish out corporal punishment, like beatings, on the students. [139][140][141], This was criminalised on 23 July 1990,[142] when Section 139A of the Education Act 1989 was inserted by the Education Amendment Act 1990. A left-wing back-bench move in Parliament to ban CP at national level failed by 181 votes to 120 in 1976. Although it is legally permitted for boys only, in practice the illegal caning of girls is not unknown. [21] In mainland China, corporal punishment in schools was outlawed in 1986,[22] although the practice remains common, especially in rural areas. See likewise Children sent to Caribbean for 'basic' schooling, a news report from July 1996, and UK Ugandans rush kids to Kampala schools, from May 1998. Most had anticipated the legislation and abandoned CP voluntarily several years earlier. WebCorporal punishment not only violates childrens fundamental rights to dignity and bodily integrity but can have long-lasting implications for their life-chances by reducing their [20] In the 1960s, Soviet visitors to western schools expressed shock at the canings there. Children are better able to make decisions about their behavior, exercise self-control, and be accountable for their actions when they understand the penalty they face for misbehaving is comparable to their actions. Web51K views 2 years ago. Just one LEA, Coventry, bizarrely required all canings for both sexes, even at secondary level, to be applied to offenders' hands and not to their backsides. The method has been criticised by some children's rights activists who claim that many cases of corporal punishment in schools have resulted in physical and mental abuse of schoolchildren. Encyclopaedia entry from 1911 summarising the state of the law at the time: teachers had the common-law right to chastise their pupils, not only for offences at school but also, under a court ruling of 1893, for those committed on the way to or from school, or during school hours. [3] There is a vast amount of literature on this, in both popular and serious culture. [168][169][170] Anecdotal evidence suggests that the caning of girls is not particularly unusual, and that they might be as likely to be caned as boys. According to one report, corporal punishment is a key reason for school dropouts and subsequently, street children, in Pakistan; as many as 35,000 high school pupils are said to drop out of the education system each year because they have been punished or abused in school. [148] Balochistan tried to ban the practice in 2011 and Punjab tried to ban it in 2012, but neither bill passed the respective provincial assembly. [176], The proverb "If you love your cow, tie it up; if you love your child, beat him" is still considered "wisdom" and is held by many Thai parents and teachers. CP in primary schools seems generally to have tailed off rather earlier than in secondary schools: common enough in the early 1950s, it was clearly less so by the end of the 1960s, though it had by no means disappeared everywhere even in the early 1980s, as these punishment-book extracts show. They suggest that student self-governance can be an effective alternative for managing disruptive classroom behaviour, while stressing the importance of adequate training and support for teachers. At many schools these formal canings would be administered privately, often in the head's or deputy head's office or in the staffroom. [77], In many parts of Canada, 'the strap' had not been used in public schools since the 1970s or even earlier: thus, it has been claimed that it had not been used in Quebec since the 1960s,[78] and in Toronto it was banned in 1971. [24] However, there is a lack of empirical evidence showing that corporal punishment leads to better control in the classrooms. When parents or teachers use spanking, it doesnt lead to the desired outcomes in discipline or teach children how to regulate their Corporal punishment in British state schools, and also in private schools receiving any element of public funding, was banned by parliament in 1987. However, the court did hold that the boys had been deprived of their right to an education in keeping with their parents' views, contrary to Article 2 ("the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions"). They assumed a right of chastisement was a defense of justification against the accusation of "causing bodily harm" per Paragraph (=Section) 223 Strafgesetzbuch (Federal Penal Code). LEA rules from earlier periods include the long-defunct Middlesex in 1950 (girls to be caned "only in exceptional circumstances" and only on the hands; boys could be caned on the hands or buttocks) and Somerset in 1954 (CP only as a last resort; girls to be caned only in extreme cases, and never by male teachers). [225], Corporal punishment is technically unlawful in schools under article 75 of the Education Law 2005,[226] but there is no clear statement that corporal punishment is prohibited. [150], In 1783, Poland became the first country in the world to prohibit corporal punishment. Contrary to popular myth, the court found that corporal punishment, of the kind then routinely administered in Scottish schools, was not of itself a breach of the Human Rights Convention. This academic paper (2018) is very interesting despite some woolly jargon. The student might be asked to stand in front of it and put his or her hands or elbows on the seat, or to stand behind it and bend over its back. Private schools, about which even fewer generalisations are possible, will have to await separate treatment elsewhere. Most of the boys were from local working class families, but the school had a good reputation and they studied hard. [100] Corporal punishment is considered unlawful in schools under article 371-1 of the Civil Code. In my own personal view as a non-lawyer, I find some of the argumentation quite difficult to follow. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that these are all broad generalisations, to which exceptions could always be found. In Manchester it seems to have been left up to individual schools, with a culprit at boys-only establishments such as St Augustines RC being asked to bend over a chair to be strapped, while his opposite number at one of the city's mainstream co-ed schools would often have to hold out his hands, following the Newcastle/Scotland model. [110][111], In the law of the Republic of Ireland, corporal punishment was prohibited in 1982 by an administrative decision of John Boland, the Minister for Education, which applied to national schools (most primary schools) and to secondary schools receiving public funding (practically all of them). Also, some schools, even new-built comprehensive ones, introduced a system of "students' courts" at which a recommendation for CP might be one of the "sentencing" options available, but this was subject to confirmation by the teachers in charge, and it would be a member of staff who delivered the actual punishment. Corporal punishment at school has been prohibited in folkskolestadgan (the elementary school ordinance) since 1 January 1958. 575 (2003). This campaign gave rise to a joke on the left of the NUT that NASUWT stood for "National Association of Sadists and Union of Women Torturers". The request, if granted, would be fulfilled forthwith, and the slate thereby wiped clean. Rosenczveig, Jean-Pierre (1 February 2008). [45][46] Laws on corporal punishment in schools are determined at individual state or territory level. Despite the fact that the tradition had been forgone for nearly 30 years, legislation banning the practice entirely by law was not implemented until 2004. Webmortarboard and cane corporal punishment - corporal punishment in schools stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images Vintage illustration featuring a schoolboy being caned during a Greek lesson in "The Boy's Own Paper", published in London, circa 1896. The schools claimed that their "freedom of belief", as protected by human rights legislation, was infringed because it was their Christian belief that naughty children should be spanked. WebA key European Court of Human Rights judgment (1982), which hastened the demise of corporal punishment in British state schools. In response to a 2008 poll of 6,162 UK teachers by the Times Educational Supplement, 22% of secondary school teachers and 16% of primary school teachers supported "the right to use corporal punishment in extreme cases". [10], Corporal punishment in the context of schools in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been variously defined as: causing deliberate pain to a child in response to the child's undesired behavior and/or language,[11] "purposeful infliction of bodily pain or discomfort by an official in the educational system upon a student as a penalty for unacceptable behavior",[7] and "intentional application of physical pain as a means of changing behavior" (not the occasional use of physical restraint to protect student or others from immediate harm).[8].