When I read about a schoolboy committing suicide, simply because his `Princi’ (Principal) caned him at La Mart's Calcutta, it saddened me. Another young life snuffed out for something very trivial. But at the same time I felt a bit puzzled, by the young boy’s action. Caning was a regular event like rain or sunshine in our times.
We never thought twice about being caned. In fact, not having been caned in a year, meant you were not exactly a normal schoolboy!
I am not passing a value judgement. Simply stating what was then the norm. Tom Brown, William Brown and Jennings were among literary role models for many of us, young Indian public schoolboys. And all of them lived with canings. Bengali schoolboy stories such as Nonte Phonte, too glorified caning. So caning couldn’t be too bad for us either.
You could be caned for coming late, having bellbots which were an inch wider than regulation, not doing your lessons, some naughty prank, a fist-fight with a classmate, almost anything. There were fixed rates for various `crime', ranging from two or three swishes to 6 of the best to a monster 36!
Boys learnt to hide dairies inside their pants to ward off the cane and teachers to search for them before caning commenced !!
I forget when, but at some stage the school authorities (or was it an education ministry directive?) decided that mere teachers were not to be allowed to wield the cane. Only the headmaster and Princi could pick up that slender instrument of student torture!
That of course did not stop teachers like a Mr Simon we had, from twsiting tufts of our hair in ways which were well, quite innovative, or from using the wooden scale quite liberally on fingers extended. Few, if any would tell their parents about all this.
Parents, in any case in those days had the attitude: if you have been caned then its your fault. You must have been naughty. Not only did teachers have the right to cane or cuff you, but also any relative or neighbour who thought you were out of form!
My parents used to go a step futher and would say if you have fought in school or in the colony's playgrounds, and have been beaten up, then its your business. Just learn to defend yourself better!
(That of course meant, I would often pretend I had a stomach ache, after having picked up a fight with a senior the day before! Not that it helped. Retribution always caught up and the only way out was to toughen oneself up and face life as it came.)
My mom also used to quote Sanskrit slokas which said your first `rhin' (debt) is to your country, then parents and then to your teachers. God, girlfriends etc. could come afterwards! Though frankly at times after smarting from a few canes or from a nasty bit of scaling, I diidn't exactly feel I owed any debt to any of my teachers !!
But then teachers and principals did not merely cane us, they also lavished love on us, which is perhaps not so common nowadays. I still remember a beaming Mrs Phillips, one of my teachers, enveloping me in a bear hug, with the exclamation "my child ... I am so proud of you" after I got my first scholastic prize in school. She meant it. Children understand real feelings better than us adults.
But times are a different now. Child psychologists tell us of the immense damage to the young mind by physical punishment. Even scoldings are frowned upon. Teachers, bogged down by innovative teaching experiments have no time to feel for children they teach.
The cane had better be placed in the museum as a relic of bygone era.
We never thought twice about being caned. In fact, not having been caned in a year, meant you were not exactly a normal schoolboy!
I am not passing a value judgement. Simply stating what was then the norm. Tom Brown, William Brown and Jennings were among literary role models for many of us, young Indian public schoolboys. And all of them lived with canings. Bengali schoolboy stories such as Nonte Phonte, too glorified caning. So caning couldn’t be too bad for us either.
You could be caned for coming late, having bellbots which were an inch wider than regulation, not doing your lessons, some naughty prank, a fist-fight with a classmate, almost anything. There were fixed rates for various `crime', ranging from two or three swishes to 6 of the best to a monster 36!
Boys learnt to hide dairies inside their pants to ward off the cane and teachers to search for them before caning commenced !!
I forget when, but at some stage the school authorities (or was it an education ministry directive?) decided that mere teachers were not to be allowed to wield the cane. Only the headmaster and Princi could pick up that slender instrument of student torture!
That of course did not stop teachers like a Mr Simon we had, from twsiting tufts of our hair in ways which were well, quite innovative, or from using the wooden scale quite liberally on fingers extended. Few, if any would tell their parents about all this.
Parents, in any case in those days had the attitude: if you have been caned then its your fault. You must have been naughty. Not only did teachers have the right to cane or cuff you, but also any relative or neighbour who thought you were out of form!
My parents used to go a step futher and would say if you have fought in school or in the colony's playgrounds, and have been beaten up, then its your business. Just learn to defend yourself better!
(That of course meant, I would often pretend I had a stomach ache, after having picked up a fight with a senior the day before! Not that it helped. Retribution always caught up and the only way out was to toughen oneself up and face life as it came.)
My mom also used to quote Sanskrit slokas which said your first `rhin' (debt) is to your country, then parents and then to your teachers. God, girlfriends etc. could come afterwards! Though frankly at times after smarting from a few canes or from a nasty bit of scaling, I diidn't exactly feel I owed any debt to any of my teachers !!
But then teachers and principals did not merely cane us, they also lavished love on us, which is perhaps not so common nowadays. I still remember a beaming Mrs Phillips, one of my teachers, enveloping me in a bear hug, with the exclamation "my child ... I am so proud of you" after I got my first scholastic prize in school. She meant it. Children understand real feelings better than us adults.
But times are a different now. Child psychologists tell us of the immense damage to the young mind by physical punishment. Even scoldings are frowned upon. Teachers, bogged down by innovative teaching experiments have no time to feel for children they teach.
The cane had better be placed in the museum as a relic of bygone era.
1 comment:
Caning was part of missionary school discipline which like our Wren and Martin books have more or less disappeared. It was part of regular school life and we lived through it. It is strange that a kid today should take so extreme a step. We were caned by Fr Panackal and Fr Paul on our palms and not on the back where a millimeter of fabric could hide the lingering redness. The process was always the same. Your fingers were uncurled with the tip of the cane and you waited with bated breath as the cane was raised off the straightened fingers, only to rush down with a whistling sound. The sting came as a jab and the fingers curled again into a wrist, smarting for some time after that. However, nostalgia of the good times at school never clouded with memories of caning.
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