Around School CP

This week we'll talk a bit about school discipline in my time and why we don't tend talk about much here and not on the forum at all.

For me school was in the era where Sir and Miss were Sir and Miss, children attending were called Pupils (NEVER ‘students’!) in very much their domain and while your head teacher was friendly he wasn’t your friend at school-he was an Adult Authority figure who had Authority over you.

My first school was not untypical being a infant/junior school in a Country district which was Victorian with separate doors originally intended for girls and boys but used to separate juniors from infants and their was an informal gender separation in the playground area.

It was in the era where also corporal punishment was what we expected and got - a social currency where songs were made up about it and details traded on the school grapevine - and every class room had some implement or other by the teachers desk.

Our desks were traditional wooden ones with a inkwell as we HAD to use a fountain pen by the time we’d reached Nine and a lid in which we stored our exercise books (Textbooks and any handouts were given out and collected by your teacher.

Another school did but much was informal and hence unregulated contary to local authority rules which should of been followed with no entries in Punishment Books.

Another feature of that era was a lack of recognition of certain disabilities that affect learning such as Dyslexia and Autism and in an era where the child who got poor results and never seemed to improve was often spanked and caned just for that it does influence my views feeling that it was unjust and abusive in a way that c.p. for things like wilful damage to school property, attacking fellow pupils and the like can be understood as a deterant and to which schools have struggled to find things that do work in practise since c.p. in state schools stopped in 1987 and in Private Schools in the 2,000's.

Such practises were not uncommon in that era having met many dyslexics in adult life who told me of their school experiences so I understand for a number this whole topic is triggering and so we don't have lines upon lines of c.p. related text on the forum or art although we recognize it was a part of the reality of those times.

I also don't feel the working defination of being an asb/alb is one that has to include it at all as for some it is too unpleasant to even consider and in any event for those that do you do after all consent to it in a way back then having been enrolled by your parents, you were just subjected to it.