The central question behind any system of punishment must ultimately be whether it achieves its purpose.
On this point, the evidence is far from unanimous.
Some contributors to the survey were emphatic that corporal punishment worked.
A boy punished for talking in class remembered that he did not repeat the offence. Another, caned because of unsatisfactory work, recalled taking considerably greater care afterwards. Others reported that a particular punishment was never repeated because the behaviour which caused it was never repeated.
Measured purely by immediate obedience, these punishments might therefore be described as successful.
Yet the matter is not quite so straightforward.
A pupil may cease an action for several reasons.
He may have accepted that his behaviour was wrong. Alternatively, he may simply wish to avoid another painful punishment. The outward result is identical, but the educational effect is quite different.
This distinction was not always considered important in traditional discipline.
For many teachers the immediate purpose was to restore order. If a pupil stopped talking, ceased fighting or completed his work properly, the punishment had achieved what was required.
Deterrence
Corporal punishment also operated through deterrence.
A pupil did not necessarily have to experience the cane personally to be influenced by it.
Seeing another pupil sent to the headmaster, watching a classroom slippering, or hearing the sound of punishment from outside an office could be sufficient.
The knowledge that the punishment existed formed part of the school’s disciplinary atmosphere.
In this sense the cane possessed a significance beyond the relatively small number of occasions on which it might actually be used.
A strict headmaster might rarely need to cane pupils precisely because everyone knew that he would do so when necessary.
That, at least, was the argument traditionally advanced in favour of the system.
Resentment and Ineffectiveness
The contrary evidence cannot be ignored.
Some former pupils state plainly that corporal punishment did not improve their behaviour. Others remember complying with school rules while developing resentment towards particular teachers.
A punishment believed to be unjust could damage rather than strengthen respect for authority.
There was also the problem of habitual offenders.
In almost every large school there were pupils who accumulated punishments without apparently being greatly altered by them. For such children the slipper or cane could become simply another feature of school life.
The existence of repeat punishments raises an obvious question. If a pupil is repeatedly punished for similar behaviour, can the method truly be described as corrective?
What the Survey Shows
No simple conclusion can be drawn from personal testimony alone.
The survey does not constitute a controlled scientific experiment. The contributors differ in age, background, school, decade and circumstances. Their memories are retrospective, and their judgements have inevitably been influenced by subsequent experience.
Nevertheless, certain conclusions can reasonably be made.
Corporal punishment was capable of producing immediate obedience. It could also act as a powerful deterrent, particularly when pupils regarded the possibility of punishment as real and predictable.
It was less certain as a means of changing attitudes.
Much depended upon whether the pupil considered the punishment deserved, whether it was proportionate to the offence, and whether the teacher administering it commanded respect.
Perhaps the most striking finding is therefore not that corporal punishment always worked or always failed.
It is that its effectiveness depended upon the circumstances surrounding it.
The cane, strap and slipper were merely instruments. Their disciplinary effect depended upon the judgement of the adults who employed them and the character of the children upon whom they were used.
That fact must remain central to any fair assessment of corporal punishment in the schools of the period.
