Much of the disagreement surrounding corporal punishment may actually come down to the meaning of the word “respect”.
When people say that children were taught to respect teachers in the old days, what do they mean?
Do they mean that the children admired their teachers? Trusted them? Thought highly of them? Believed that they were fair and decent people?
Or do they simply mean that the children behaved themselves when the teacher entered the room?
These are rather different things.
Respect for the law, for another person’s rights, or for the authority of a teacher does not always mean esteem or admiration. Sometimes it is simply a matter of practicality. We follow rules because society works better when people do so.
One former pupil put the matter rather neatly: corporal punishment was not necessarily about respect at all. It was about maintaining discipline — and, in his experience, it generally did that job very effectively.
There is something important in that observation.
Perhaps the most honest defence of corporal punishment is not that it made children love or admire authority, but that it was an efficient deterrent.
If a boy knew that calling a teacher by his first name rather than “Sir” would result in a painful sting across the palm, he was very likely to remember to say “Sir”.
In that narrow sense, the old-fashioned school might certainly have appeared more respectful.
The question is what happened when the boy left the school gates.
Did he continue to behave politely because he had learned the value of courtesy?
Or did he simply know that there was no longer a cane waiting for him?
That distinction is rather crucial.
A child can be trained to obey a particular rule without ever understanding why the rule exists. He may know exactly what he must do to avoid punishment while having learned very little about kindness, consideration or self-control.
Indeed, once the threat disappears, the behaviour may disappear with it.
This is perhaps why some former pupils remember the cane quite differently from their memories of individual teachers.
The cane itself did not necessarily command respect. It was simply one of the hazards of school life.
And yet, for some people, there was an acceptance that if a punishment came from a teacher whom they genuinely respected, it was somehow fair.
That brings us to a rather more complicated question.
Perhaps it was never the punishment that earned respect.
Perhaps the respect came first.
