Fighting occupied a more serious category.
Unlike talking or incomplete homework, it involved an immediate possibility of injury.
It also challenged the school’s responsibility for the safety of its pupils.
Younger Children
The survey includes the account of a ten-year-old boy punished by a headmistress in 1954 after fighting in the playground.
The incident was treated formally.
A note was also sent home.
This demonstrates that fighting could involve both school and parental authority.
Grammar School
A grammar-school respondent was punished for fighting in 1965 at the age of fourteen.
The matter reached the headmaster.
He received a formal punishment and stated that he did not repeat the offence.
Fighting or Play?
Teachers nevertheless faced the difficulty of distinguishing genuine aggression from horseplay.
Three boys caught play-fighting on a staircase in 1959 were punished by the headmaster.
Their behaviour may not have involved anger, but the location made it dangerous.
The headmaster’s concern was therefore understandable even though the boys regarded themselves as merely fooling about.
Who Started It?
Another difficulty was responsibility.
Children involved in fights commonly disagreed about who had started them.
The Scottish pupil punished at seven in 1967 believed the other boy had provoked the incident.
Both were punished.
From the school’s viewpoint, both had participated.
From the respondent’s viewpoint, equal punishment failed to recognise the difference between aggressor and responder.
The Teacher’s Problem
A teacher arriving halfway through a fight might have little evidence concerning its beginning.
Immediate separation was straightforward.
Establishing responsibility was much harder.
Punishing both participants was administratively simple but could produce resentment.
Deterrence
Several respondents punished for fighting stated that they did not repeat the offence.
This suggests that corporal punishment could act as a deterrent in individual cases.
But the survey cannot establish whether punishment was the only reason.
Growing maturity, fear of further trouble and parental reaction may all have contributed.
