In the last couple of posts I’ve been looking at the 1930s book “Letters to schoolmasters”, and its author’s no-nonsense attitudes to education. I’ve found some pretty useful tips for future role-play, if ever I find myself in the position of role-playing a schoolmistress.
Before we say good-bye to him, here are some ideas for how non-corporal punishment can be used in the classroom:
Punish slightly at first and, so far as school custom allows, by punishments which touch you personally, such as short passages of repetition. But remember that repetition may be the most uneven of punishments: one boy may memorize in a twelfth part of the time another takes. It is your business to rectify this: watch the self-satisfied smirk and turn it down for a wrong syllable; carry the lame dog over his stiles.
…A really forward class needs drastic measures: it takes a stubborn lot to hold out long against repeated doses of dictation (use all sorts of language like the builders of Babel!) served out to them too fast for their comfort but not so fast as to give an excuse for recalcitrancy, until the manliest spirit wilts.
I particularly enjoyed the last bit – I can just see a class of miscreants, scribbling away, languages swapping every few paragraph, with a promise of a caning to the bottom three spellers in the class.
That ‘manliest spirit’ did provoke me to wonder how the poor man would cope with a class of girls. Sense he would be somewhat hampered by his views of a ‘gentler sex’
Have you ever read Pedagogue Pie which gives an headmistress’s perspective and lots of thoughts for role play ?
Oh, that’s mean!