The Times gave me a good giggle a couple of days ago by publishing the following opinion piece:
There’s a line in the long Wikipedia entry for Eton College that, more than anything else, epitomises the peculiarity of the institution. Under the section on “corporal punishment”, which was apparently such a fixation at the school that in the 16th century Friday was set aside as “flogging day”, it reads: “Beating was phased out in 1983.”
Huh? Why did it have to be phased out? Surely, if you’ve decided violence against children is a bad thing, then you get rid of it in one go? And how did this phasing out work? Was the a period in the Eighties when some boys were beaten while others weren’t? Or perhaps children were, over the course of a few months, flogged with decreasing viciousness, until the activity finally died out? Weird.
I really like the idea of the Headmaster, sour-faced, announcing in assembly one day: “Starting today, the school is forbidden to use corporal punishment on scholarship pupils. Each of you must appoint a proxy, who will be punished in your stead whenever you deserve a thrashing.”
What? That’s as good a method of phasing out canings as any suggested in the paper…
My guess is that corporal punishment would continue to be used on the senior students, who had started at the school when CP was part of the standard rules. However, new students would not be subject to it, and thus it would be phased out over a few years.