Much of the debate surrounding birthday customs eventually comes down to one deceptively simple word: consent. At first sight...
For many British observers, another intriguing feature of the discussion has been the very existence of the American “birthday...
The discussion inevitably moved from birthday customs towards the much larger subject of school corporal punishment. For much of...
One of the most thoughtful questions arising from the debate concerns the meaning of tradition itself. Defenders of birthday...
The original controversy ultimately presents a surprisingly modern question: where should a school draw the boundary between friendliness and...
Curious Recollections of an Unusual Educational Practice Curious Recollections of an Unusual Educational Practice In an age when corporal...
Corporal punishment in British schools varied considerably from one establishment to another. A punishment regarded as perfectly ordinary in...
One contributor recalled a somewhat comparable story from the 1950s. The account concerned a boy attending a primary school...
The question acquired a rather different significance during the political arguments surrounding corporal punishment in the 1980s. As pressure...
The proposal also illustrated a familiar difficulty in educational policy: what appears workable in a large town may be...
There is presently too little evidence to conclude that sending pupils to neighbouring schools for corporal punishment was ever...
There can be few institutions more characteristic of the traditional British school than the prefect. To generations of schoolboys,...