Sir, If we, as an educated country, wish to step back into Dickensian times, we have no further to look than Tony North, a school governor from Devon, and his letter (Oct 6). I retired recently from teaching after 40 years both within the classroom as a geography teacher and as a deputy headteacher. I have taught in both the state and private sectors and I have been privileged to be involved with the education of thousands of young people. I neither was inclined nor resorted to corporal punishment in my classrooms. Certainly, it was endemic in some schools when my career began in 1966 but was, thankfully, outlawed by the Education Act in the mid-1980s.

Corporal punishment is an outrage. It is an act of barbarism and brutality against the child. In legal terms it is assault and battery, rightly punishable in law. Teachers have a duty of care to their charges. Resorting to corporal punishment is tantamount to failure in the classroom, and those who wish to practice it need to be removed from our noble profession.

I would argue that Mr North’s concerns about “semi-literate truants” are more likely to be a reflection of poor parenting than an absence of caning in the classroom. My sympathies are with the headteacher, staff and parents of the school of which he is governor.

Ian Jameson

Woking, Surrey

Sir, Aged 9, I went to a boarding school, run on strict Christian principles by a charitable organisation. At breakfast on my first morning, I gave a boy my egg in exchange for his porridge. The master on duty knocked me to the floor, held my head hard against the sanded stone by putting his foot on it, and said: “We don’t do that.”

Later the school governor told us that it was impossible to imagine his pocket watch existing by accident. He told us that God was “the Master Watchmaker” who created the universe and all life within it. When he invited questions, I asked: “Please sir, who made the watchmaker?” He beat me with his ash stick, then sent for a cane that was split for the last six inches, so that it left rows of blood-filled blisters wherever it landed, and finished the job.

Punishments like these were commonplace, and we accepted that they would be dealt out whether or not we had broken any rule. We all went daily in Tony North’s “fear of the lawmaker”, and because of it we became habitual liars, and used deceit constantly to avoid being beaten.

Is it rational to believe that suffering inflicted in the name of the law will improve anyone?

Bernard Kay

London NW10

Sir, It worked for me. I haven’t run in a corridor or played tag in an empty swimming pool these past 50 years.

Henry King

Ripon, N Yorks

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