Memories of corporal punishment

....... · 20-02-2019 09:19AM

gozunda wrote: »

Many children who experienced this in school would also have experienced similar behaviour meted at home. And yet this was only legislated against in 2015. I dont know if its strange that it is the school aspect of corporal punishment which had stayed with a lot of people. Is there a sense of shame perhaps that some parents were just as culpable as some of the teachers of that period?

One of the things that was shocking to me with school corporal punishment was that I DIDNT witness any violence at home - so seeing it up close and personal in school (let alone experiencing it) was really shocking and frightening.

Everybody in the school saw violence in school - but only some kids also saw it at home.

gozunda · 20-02-2019 02:12PM

....... wrote: »

One of the things that was shocking to me with school corporal punishment was that I DIDNT witness any violence at home - so seeing it up close and personal in school (let alone experiencing it) was really shocking and frightening.

Everybody in the school saw violence in school - but only some kids also saw it at home.

That is at least partially what I'm referring to. I know in my generation 'punishment' within the home was a fairly common thing and as in the school experience could result in some fairly extreme violence and abuse. Much of it was kept hidden and still is due to things like family, shame etc

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 02:20PM

I'm not saying this as a whataboutary statement but unfortunately, this kind of violence towards children was commonplace around the English speaking world and former British Empire. It was cultural and corporal punishment was normalised within society to a frightening level. There is still brutal treatment of kids and adults going on around the world too.

Irish schools seem to have managed to blend a dangerous mixture of 19th century British notions of spare the rod and spoil the child with some kind of weird puritanical version of Catholicism (and sometimes Protestantism) which resulted in pretty horrendous outcomes.

The most important thing is that anyone who experienced it first hand talks about it and that we don't make it some kind of secret that's pushed under the carpet. It happened and it shouldn't have.

Those memories should stand to underline why we have moved on as a society and shed those warped values.

road_high · 20-02-2019 02:35PM

My father had a school reunion I’d say 15 years ago or so, my mother went along with him and said it was all just sad stories about how the Master used beat them. Late 50s era I suppose, a very dark period in Ireland in every way. I mean they were leathered. She was quite saddened by the whole thing. She had her share of punishment too but don’t think as severe as her gran aunt was the local Headmistress.
Just shows the massive life consequences this carry on had on that generation. We were so repressed in every way, ireland was very much an Autocracy and the schools were where this cruelty really played out.
I was so happy last May when we roundly rejected the last vestages of that cruelty, I found it very emotional thinking back of my parents and grand parents

tayto lover · 20-02-2019 02:44PM

road_high wrote: »

Really hope people’s past experiences of education aren’t putting them off going back now if they feel they didn’t reach their potentials- I know that probably is the case but it needn’t be. There are so many life long learning avenues for everyone. I hate to think of people who were demeaned and diminished in school being still deprived of an education because of the fear and put downs they went through. That wasn’t what education should be. So many great organizations now like NALA, National Learning Network and lifelong learning programmes in the colleges that can help people without the shame and brutality of the past.

I’m a volunteer tutor with an ETB teaching adults to read and write.
Many of them left school early because of the problems we have been discussing.
It’s nice to give back a bit of stolen dignity.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5 · 20-02-2019 03:02PM

I was in primary in the 90s and remember seeing a good bit of it from one teacher but don't think I got any.

Partly that was because I was academic and fairly well behaved but also because the bitch wouldn't have dared, my parents would have been straight in to roar at her.

She was the fcuking iron fist of justice with the kids whose parents were more deferential or not around or whatever though. She could smell vulnerability on a child like we could smell the drink off her. The actual corporal punishment didn't go beyond a whack of the ruler or a twist of the ear but the threat of it was deployed constantly. She taught junior infants through 2nd class.

Any kid who wasn't the best academically was an idiot, we'd be encouraged to laugh at them. Any kid who came from a single parent household, whose family she considered lower class etc were marked as bold and she'd be down on them like a tonne of bricks over everything. Her niece was in the class and god be with any child who fell out with her.

There was this little hippie crustie kid who was in the school for a year or so, think he was Belgian. He used to run away from her, swear at her in French, knock things off her desk etc. At the time I thought he was really bold and annoying but in hindsight go on kid, rage against the machine!

road_high · 20-02-2019 03:07PM

tayto lover wrote: »

I’m a volunteer tutor with an ETB teaching adults to read and write.
Many of them left school early because of the problems we have been discussing.
It’s nice to give back a bit of stolen dignity.

Must be very rewarding for you and the students- and show them that education isn’t about beatings with a strap. The saddest thing is the stolen opportunity to learn (properly). There’s a whole generation that lived in fear and loathing of school and missed out so much as a result

road_high · 20-02-2019 03:32PM

Lena Weak Alternator wrote: »

.

There was this little hippie crustie kid who was in the school for a year or so, think he was Belgian. He used to run away from her, swear at her in French, knock things off her desk etc. At the time I thought he was really bold and annoying but in hindsight go on kid, rage against the machine!

Probably because he hadn't experienced the "know your place" Irish educational system before then!

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 03:59PM

road_high wrote: »

Probably because he hadn't experienced the "know your place" Irish educational system before then!

I experienced school in France (I can't comment on Belgium, but I would assume it's probably similar enough) and while it can be fairly full-on in terms of work load and long days and the teachers can be fairly grumpy and demanding, there was never that atmosphere of 'know your place'. It felt more like the kind of vibe you'd get in university here. You were treated as an individual and there was a mutual respect both directions. It was far less patronising and authoritarian.

Also, I think the way they break "Lycée" (High School / Senior Cycle) into a different institution makes a whole lot more sense. There's a massive difference between 11-15 year olds and older teenagers.

In one case you're dealing with kids in the other, young adults really and the atmosphere and approach to running the school was more like a university or IT in lycée and more like a more open minded community school at the collège level (junior cycle).

Also the collèges are more local - so you'd have lots of them around and then you might just have one large lycée per suburb / town (and excellent bus connections to it). They're more like the scale of a small IT here in a lot of cases and have absolutely fantastic facilities for IT, sports, etc and often linked into a community sports complex that might contain a small stadium, pools, tracks, playing pitches, tennis courts etc.

The collèges also would tend to be linked to big public facilities like libraries, pools and smaller sports complexes and so on.

I just always found Irish school totally patronising. (I know I'm repeating that word but it's the only one that fits). You were given no responsibility. You weren't trusted and you were treated like a child when you were about 17 and all with this weird atmosphere of uniforms and excessive rules.

It's really no preparation for university or for work. There's no focus on guided learning where you do your own research and discover a subject for yourself. Everything's spoon fed and all responsibility it taken away from you.

Then you arrive into university or a job and you're suddenly on your own two feet and some people seem to really struggle with that for a long while.

i'm not saying the Irish system is totally awful right now and I'm not saying the French system isn't full of major problems (it is), and I know Ireland performs well on various international rankings, but it could look at some of the more positive aspects of some of the continental systems and bring them in. There's no reason why we couldn't be more like say Finland. It's still very weird to have all these schools in uniforms and gender segregation, religious segregation and all of that in 2019.

It just always felt like you were stepping into a time warp kinda Harry Potter meets Sister Assumpta with a big stick.

Lorelli! · 20-02-2019 03:59PM

I remember being told about the meter stick and how if you moved your hand back naturally from fear and they missed, you would get it much worse on the next try so you would have to stand there shaking trying not to pull away.

I can hardly remember but I was smacked in low infants on the hand which would have been around 87'. I think I'd messed up some paint or something and the teacher flipped out.

I switched to a nuns school in primary and only remember one incident where a nun slapped a nine year old accross the face.

Also remember in secondary, around third year, the teacher threw a duster at someone because they drew a swastika on their copy.

One particular time I do recall was in 6th year so it was around 2001, when our principal lost the plot with a fella and dragged him out of the class by the ear. Tbf the bloke wasn't really that bad in school. He was a bit of a messer but not the worst. The lad was disgusted by it and when the teacher came back into the room, you could tell he was disgusted by himself. It was really awkward and out of character for him. We just sat there in silence. It was kind like 'youve disappointed us now sir' and the roles were reversed!...for around half an hour! I think he did apologize to the lad in the end.

Those are the only things I can recall and tbf there were some teachers that were really nice. Oh and some eccentrics and some that didn't give a crap.

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 04:14PM

I think the worst story that I've heard was from one of my gran's sisters. She was saying that on her first day in school, aged 4 a nun walked past, my auntie thought she was smiling at her and naturally enough smiled back. The nun actually had some kind of problem with her false teeth and a facial twitch which made it look like she was smiling. She reached out and slapped her hard enough to knock her flat on her face crying and kept shouting "I'll knock that smile off your face!"

This was a 4 year old girl, who was absolutely tiny at the time and had ringlets and little glasses. I don't know what kind of utter savage could actually do something like that? I mean it's absolutely insane when you think about it.
She was just a bubbly little kid and had never experienced anything like that in her home life.

She didn't seem to stay in school for very long, as far as I am aware she left when she was 12, worked and then went back to the tech to do design, moved to London and continued on and ended up having quite a successful career absolutely no thanks to the nuns anyway.

....... · 20-02-2019 04:24PM

Lorelli! wrote: »

I remember being told about the meter stick and how if you moved your hand back naturally from fear and they missed, you would get it much worse on the next try so you would have to stand there shaking trying not to pull away.

Yes, I learned quite early that if you moved your hand TOWARDS the metre stick it was less painful getting hit by a more middle part of it than the end - law of the lever (although I didnt find that out til much later!!).

But you had to be careful not to look like you were being impudent doing it - as that would also result in a worse beating.

Lorelli! · 20-02-2019 04:25PM

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think the worst story that I've heard was from one of my gran's sisters. She was saying that on her first day in school, aged 4 -

A nun walked past, my auntie thought she was smiling at her and naturally enough smiled back. The nun actually had some kind of problem with her false teeth and a facial twitch which made it look like she was smiling. She reached out and slapped her hard enough to knock her flat on her face crying and kept shouting "I'll knock that smile off your face!"

This was a 4 year old girl, who was absolutely tiny at the time and had ringlets and little glasses. I don't know what kind of utter savage could actually do something like that? I mean it's absolutely insane when you think about it.

I only ever saw one incident myself with a nun but it was a later time. I was talking to a taxi driver there a couple of months ago and he was telling me about his experience with the nuns after he was orphaned. Some horrible things and he was clearly still traumatized by it. I remember thinking how hard it must have been especially with him living there so he couldn't even get away from it.

road_high · 20-02-2019 04:28PM

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think the worst story that I've heard was from one of my gran's sisters. She was saying that on her first day in school, aged 4 -

A nun walked past, my auntie thought she was smiling at her and naturally enough smiled back. The nun actually had some kind of problem with her false teeth and a facial twitch which made it look like she was smiling. She reached out and slapped her hard enough to knock her flat on her face crying and kept shouting "I'll knock that smile off your face!"

This was a 4 year old girl, who was absolutely tiny at the time and had ringlets and little glasses. I don't know what kind of utter savage could actually do something like that? I mean it's absolutely insane when you think about it.
She was just a bubbly little kid and had never experienced anything like that in her home life.

She didn't seem to stay in school for very long, as far as I am aware she left when she was 12, worked and then went back to the tech to do design, moved to London and continued on and ended up having quite a successful career absolutely no thanks to the nuns anyway.

We like to slag off England in particular but it was an absolute safety valve for so many to get away from the nastiness and small mindedness of Irish society.
That story is heartbreaking but so real. This were the same **** pontificating about unborn babies in 1983. Despite the sheer contempt displayed when they were actaully born.
People say Ireland isn't/wasn't a class society? Well it absolutely was in education and social class determined how you were treated and thus how long you'd stay.

road_high · 20-02-2019 04:32PM

Lorelli! wrote: »

I only ever saw one incident myself with a nun but it was a later time. I was talking to a taxi driver there a couple of months ago and he was telling me about his experience with the nuns after he was orphaned. Some horrible things and he was clearly still traumatized by it. I remember thinking how hard it must have been especially with him living there so he couldn't even get away from it.

If you were orphaned (so many mothers died in childbirth then) you were screwed- men weren't deemed fit to look after kids and if you were working class even more so. Only for my own grandmothers father was a farmer they'd have been taken into a hellhole "care" home when their mother died. It was a living hell for people like the taxi driver.

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 04:34PM

road_high wrote: »

We like to slag off England in particular but it was an absolute safety valve for so many to get away from the nastiness and small mindedness of Irish society.
That story is heartbreaking but so real. This were the same **** pontificating about unborn babies in 1983. Despite the sheer contempt displayed when they were actaully born.
People say Ireland isn't/wasn't a class society? Well it absolutely was in education and social class determined how you were treated and thus how long you'd stay.

There was an element of similar in England, but I think it's really going back to the Upstairs-Downstairs era of Edwardian class ridden divided society. Ireland in some ways seems to have extended the social divides of the 1920s way beyond WWII and into what should have been the modern era. The UK went through some pretty radical transformation in the 1950s and 60s and, despite still having things like a formalised class system, it did become a much more open and modern society much sooner than we did. Ireland really caught up in the 80s and 90s and in recent years that's accelerated fairly exponentially.

When you look at how the school system here evolved though, the church basically ran a class system. You had barrier fees that allowed you to create schools for the influential and schools for the plebs. So, the children of the local influencers : doctor, lawyer, politicians, business people etc tended to go to the posher school which had the nicer nuns, priests or brothers and probably didn't experience the kinds of extremes of those who went to the local CBS rather than CBC.

I'd also suspect that's why the urban (and I don't just mean Dublin) movers and shakers in society here had a rather more positive attitude towards the Church(es) role in education than your typical person who was dragged through the local hell hole secondary school.

It's the same with the health system. We didn't radically reform a system that ran as a mess of private and charitable hospitals. Instead we just started writing it cheques from the public purse until it evolved into what is now a sort of a public health system. The NHS on the other hand was a radical post war reorganisation of everything.

I mean if the NHS screws up, EVERYONE including the local lawyer, doctor, MP, is impacted. If the HSE screws up, 49% of the population has top-up insurance to bypass it. So, those most exposed to the chaos of a screwed up public system tend to be those who have less influence and voice anyway, so nothing gets done.

I mean, yes we don't have titles and landed gentry and all of that nonsense but we could do a hell of a lot more to live up to the republican values that we are supposed to espouse. There's a lot more to being a republic than just deleting 19th century British symbolism.

I genuinely do think we have made massive improvements, it's just that we need to actually sometimes hold a mirror up to to things like the health service and the education system and see them for what they are - clapped out Edwardian systems that were never radically reformed.

Neady83 · 20-02-2019 04:56PM

gozunda wrote: »

The thing is it wasn't just teachers - anywhere where there was an abuse of power- teachers, priests, social workers, guards there was a tendency for abuse whether that was beating the sh1te of small children or corruption - it was part and parcel of every day life unfortunately.

My father, who is 80 now, over the years (when he had a few drinks) talked about having to run away or escape from certain men who lived on his route home from school. He said that he would have to go through fields and bushes to get away and that he would arrive home with torn clothes and cuts and grazes and get a telling off from his parents. I'm sure that there were plenty of others who weren't so lucky to get away and who've never told a single sole about about what happened to them.

It's heartbreaking to read all these stories and to think about the impact that the cowardly actions of people with power have had on a whole generation.

The Irish Times did a piece on the childhoods ruined by corporal punishment only last year.

jmayo · 20-02-2019 05:01PM

corner of hells wrote: »

I can remember the son of a famous Dublin footballer getting seven shades beaten out of him on a regular basis by a Kerry teacher in the 70s for no particular reason other than Kerry and Dublin.

I was in primary school 70s early 80s and secondary in the 80s.
In primary school saw 8/9/10 year old lad wet himself with fear as he was considered the slow kid and always got the rod for not knowing his sums, his spellings, his prayers, etc.

Saw some teachers punch, kick and slap lads in secondary school.
Then if someone sent to principal they got the belt.

Although that is nothing to stories from my parents who had been in school in 30s/40s.
They claimed one kid actually died because the welts on the back of his legs got septic.
The local parish priest went to the family and lectured them how the teacher was a good man.
How the fook the father never plant both him and the teacher is beyond me.
Nothing ever happened, but it was a well believed story.

Listening to the stories it sounded nearly like a concentration camp and not schools.

One great story I heard though is of two brothers that fought back.
They were nearly finished school being about 13/14.
One day the usual teacher started laying in one of the brothers and because small school his brothers class was also in the room.
The brother jumped in and the two preceeded to belt 7 shades of shyte out of the teacher.
The other teachers heard the commotion but didn't step in.
The lads just picked up their bags and left.
They were legends to some, but awful ungodly hooligans to church ar**lickers.

....... · 20-02-2019 05:06PM

I always assumed some of the beatings being meted out in religious orders schools were a direct result of the frustrations that the abuser was experiencing from being forced to life an unnatural life with no sexual outlet.

Many people in religious orders were forced in by their family, again, victims of a society that had no place for an unmarried woman or too many sons to split land with etc....

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 05:16PM

I heard a few stories first hand and second hand accounts of the Magdalene institutions that have really never left me.

I wouldn't ever have been religious but I was baptised and when the 'Count Me Out' campaign was running, I formally defected from the Catholic Church and outlined my reasons for doing so, which were both my lack of interest in religion and more so the abuse scandals.

When I was in my late teens, a neighbour's mother told us the story of her experience in one of those institutions and really it was so bad that at the time it seemed so extreme that it seemed almost unbelievable. I'm not saying I didn't believe her but some of the accounts were mind blowingly disturbing. I'm not going into the detail of them here because I don't want to have someone feel she's being identified, but the accounts were truly awful.

Then as the media reports of what actually went on in those places came into the mainstream and everything she said tallied with what the worst of some of those reports were showing, I just was so disgusted with the institutions involved that I couldn't ever have anything to do with them ever again, even having them consider me some kind lapsed catholic / non participating member was too much for me. So, I made my protest formal, wrote to a Bishop and left. They responded more or less wishing me the best and that was it.

I've no issue with people's personal religious beliefs, but I have a massive issue with how the Church was organised and what it did as an organisation. I can get past the state in the sense that it's the elected will of the people and that has changed radically, but the church clung onto that stuff and attempted to burry it and hide it. That just isn't something I could be in anyway connected with.

It's a decision that I have never once regretted.

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 05:53PM

jmayo wrote: »

One great story I heard though is of two brothers that fought back.
They were nearly finished school being about 13/14.
One day the usual teacher started laying in one of the brothers and because small school his brothers class was also in the room.
The brother jumped in and the two preceeded to belt 7 shades of shyte out of the teacher.
The other teachers heard the commotion but didn't step in.
The lads just picked up their bags and left.
They were legends to some, but awful ungodly hooligans to church ar**lickers.

The other side of that though was where people did stand up for themselves, they were often sent off to industrial schools, certainly until the 70s anyway. There was huge power wielded by these institutions and systems and there was that constant threat of being sent off to one of those places.

TeaBagMania · 20-02-2019 06:01PM

from the accounts iv'e read here, id much rather the industrial school

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 06:06PM

TeaBagMania wrote: »

from the accounts iv'e read here, id much rather the industrial school

Why? They just meant you'd the same treatment 24/7 365 in full prison like conditions!

jmayo · 20-02-2019 06:07PM

TeaBagMania wrote: »

from the accounts iv'e read here, id much rather the industrial school

No you wouldn't.
It was effectively prison.
And there was no escape.

At least you got out of school at 3 or 4 o'clock and weren't spending the nights shivering waiting for some perverted cu** to get you.

Plumbthedepths · 20-02-2019 06:13PM

TeaBagMania wrote:

from the accounts iv'e read here, id much rather the industrial school

You really wouldn't, I have a friend who spent some time in one of those hellholes, he attempted suicide at 13 to try and end the abuse. Some time in hospital and the decency of some members of the education system gave him a future .

TeaBagMania · 20-02-2019 06:37PM

so if you stood up for yourself you went to prison? what in the hell

wiki reads its for the neglected, orphaned, and abandoned... how did you go from having parents to orphaned, did parents disown their children?

apologies for the ignorance in this subject, obviously i didnt grow up in Ireland.
My great great grand parents left Ireland for America in 1865 and now im starting to understand why they did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Schools_in_Ireland

EdgeCase · 20-02-2019 06:47PM

If you hit a teacher in the 1950s, 60s, 70s etc, quite likely yes. You'd have been carted off to the Children's Court, convicted and sent off to Industrial School which doubled as juvenile detention centre. I assume if you punched your teacher in the US in the same era, you'd probably have been facing criminal charges too and probably "Juvi".

The 'industrial school' system here was was basically a throwback to the Dickensian poor law type setup and was rife with abuse.

i'd also point out that corporal punishment is still legal in 19 US states and practiced in 15 of them with some of the Deep South states reporting 50% of students having experienced corporal punishment in school in 2016.

Ireland's now gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. Corporal punishment was banned in 1982 by regulatory order and then any legal protections for teachers etc were fully removed in 1997 and then for parents in 2015.

If you slapped (spanked to use US terminology) anyone here, regardless of whether you're their parent, teacher or anything else, you'd be facing charges of assaulting a minor and potentially prison time.

So, I guess lessons were learnt and acted upon... eventually.

20-02-2019 07:27PM

EdgeCase wrote: »

Given the frequency of accounts and the total lack of cases taken against teachers, schools and institutions at that time, the sad reality of it is that is must have been acceptable. Otherwise these stories would be rare and worryingly they're not. It seems like it was just tolerated.

What gets me about this thread is that people contributing their horrible stories, are "filing" them under a thread entitled "Corporal Punishment". I've a lot of reservations about that.

What i'm reading now are stories of pure child physical abuse- that, even back in 1982 and before, wasn't acceptable behaviour-well not in the society I grew up in- and even as teenagers, the people I went to school with, knew that.

In our school, the headmaster/mistress was delegated the responsibility of "corporal punishment- which constituted a few slaps on each hand with a leather/cane if justified i.e. giving cheek to teachers, extreme disruption in class etc etc.

No teacher, in my experience, ever hit a child- it was always the head master/mistress, "administering corporal punishment as stated above- and that was over a number of schools I went to. While "wrong" in today's society, it equated to the odd slap by a parent towards a very bold child- while again, not right today, wasn't something you'd open up an enquiry into in 2019.

However, what I'm finding from this thread, is that people's interpretation of "Corporal Punishment" is based on their experience in their school- naturally- but what's emerging are gross stories of child physical abuse, that even then, for both old and young people in society at the time, wouldn't have been classed as "acceptable", by any means.

Certainly, if I was subject to having my head rammed through a plate glass window or whatever, by a teacher, I'd be gunning for that teacher today- that's not nor wasn't what corporal punishment was about back in the day- but obviously, there's teachers out there that need to be held to account now.

TeaBagMania · 20-02-2019 07:40PM

EdgeCase wrote: »

i'd also point out that corporal punishment is still legal in 19 US states and practiced in 15 of them with some of the Deep South states reporting 50% of students having experienced corporal punishment in school in 2016.

I grew up in Florida and it was more or less phased out, while still legal most choose not to.
Just leaves the school district to vulnerable for lawsuits, not to mention every parent here thinks their child is perfect and incapable of wrong doing.

Back in my day we were given a choice, three licks with the wooden paddle or a three day suspension. We all chose the paddle as it was less painful than having to explain to your parents why we were suspended.

Now the school has to call the parents and get their approval before paddling, if the parents refuse its a three day suspension

20-02-2019 07:52PM

I went to a CBS primary and there were still Brothers teaching then. One had a drumstick and would routinely hit boys on the knuckles or across the backside (after making them stand at the back of the class). One particular day he hit a boy across the face with the drumstick. Blood. Even then that was seen as way beyond the pale and we expected that he would be disciplined / sacked. The boy's father (an ex-boxer) was regarded as a "hard man" and the following day he arrived at the school to confront the Brother. We all thought "yes - he's met his match and will get his comeuppance". They went into an office and a few minutes later the father left looking very meek and grey in the face. Nothing more was said.

We found out a few years later the reason - the Brother had seriously heavy republican connections and threatened to have him "sorted out" unless he dropped it.

Memories of corporal punishment

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