“I’m against corporal punishment, but don’t tell the pupils.”

The founder of Liverpool College, Reverend Conybeare, had very practical views on the implementation of corporal punishment policy in his school, according to D. Wainwright’s “Liverpool Gentlemen. A History of Liverpool College”:

Gentle himself, he disapproved of the corporal punishment that had been doled out vigorously twenty years earlier, and was still the general mode of punishment in most establishments. He proposed to run the schools without recourse to it, imagining that this would be comparatively easy in the Upper school and worth trying in the Middle and Lower.

“But at the same time,” he went on, “it would be very unwise to publish any formal declaration of this intention: no boy should have the power of taunting any master (as has sometimes been known) with his not having the right to strike him.”

The punishments recommended were “confinement during play hours”* and extra work.

* A small room was set apart for “confinement” somewhere in the lower regions of the school. But boys carried home such vivid accounts of their incarceration in this dungeon of “cage” that parents protested. For years, however, the punishment book was kept in a cupboard in this “cage”.

I can just see the advertising slogans posted all over the town:

“Liverpool College: because a cage is the best place for your child!”

One thought on ““I’m against corporal punishment, but don’t tell the pupils.”

  • 25 November, 2006 at 1:21 am
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    How thngs have changed. My son had a Friday afternoon detention recently (his first one he tells me, but who knows). The master taking detention likes him – I think because they both share an interest in American History – so they spent the hour shooting the breeze about whatever took their fancy. Now that’s a punishment to ensure he doesn’t do whatever it is he did again!

    Reply

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