I was saying when I was last speaking on this motion that I believed all kinds of minor offences are at present treated in national schools as if they were "grave transgressions" within the meaning of the regulations. I believe that not only can the Minister not check this abuse of the regulations, but he cannot even detect it. I do not say that lightly. I intend at a later stage to prove it. I was making the point on the last occasion that, in 1946, those regulations dealing with corporal punishment in schools were modified, and I said I welcomed that. I thought it was an excellent thing. I notice that in the circular which was issued drawing the attention of schools to these modifications, the Minister found it necessary to stress two points in particular. These constituted a modification of the regulations. One was that any corporal punishment to be administered would be on the open hand only, and the second was that it should never in any circumstances be administered for mere failure at lessons. Those were the two modifications in 1946. I say, "Excellent," but I notice, therefore, that, in 1946, the Department felt the need to stress those two points, because, I suggest, the term "grave transgression" was, in fact, being misinterpreted in many schools, and the Department stressed their desire to have it correctly interpreted by modifying the regulations.
Now, I am fully aware that very frequently the reason for the administering of corporal punishment in schools arises from conditions quite outside the control of the teachers— to conditions of overcrowding, to the excessive emphasis upon examination results, and to the fact that our education system makes no allowance for the teacher who has to teach backward children in the same class as bright children, and makes no allowance for the fact that the teacher is frequently harassed by inspectors of various kinds. The teacher finds himself or herself in classes which come up to as much as 60 in number.
I noticed a good example of that in the Sunday Independent, not so long ago. They published this photograph which shows you the back of a school room in which little boys and girls are doing their level best to work, although there is not room in the classrooms for ordinary desks. They have to do their work kneeling on the ground and struggling to work on benches. I do not want to mention the name of the school—I do not think there is any point in that—but I do suggest that the little girls at the back of this school room are not getting a fair chance either to learn or to observe ordinary discipline in the classroom; and it is quite easy to imagine that if you have, as in this case, 90 children in such a room, the conditions are such that you may, however reluctantly, be led to resort to corporal punishments, on occasion, which are not justified or permitted by the regulations.
I know all that—I am also convinced that to some extent we are all to blame fur these overcrowding conditions in our schools, because it is our educational system, and in so far as it lies within us to change such conditions, and in so far as we have tolerated them, the fault to some extent is ours. I am also aware of the fact that the teachers' condition is influenced by the judgment of inspectors—both inspectors of the Department of Education, and diocesan inspectors, who tend to judge teachers exclusively on the capacity of the class to answer questions quickly.
When I say we are all to some extent to blame for these conditions, I think we are justified in saying that amongst those of us who are to blame have been successive Ministers for Education. Remembering all that, I would nevertheless contend that if the Minister places teachers in unbearable conditions for the doing of illpaid work, and allows them to be harried by examination systems and ill-conceived judgments and inspections, I would put the question: why should the unfortunate children suffer more— because they already suffer from the overcrowding—suffer more, from his fault, from the grave transgression of successive Ministers in this regard. How often, in our national schools, the sins of the Minister and the sins of the Department are visited on the children and in particular upon the girls.
Now I am asking the Seanad, in asking it to pass this motion, to put a stop to this at least in the case of little girls. Let us see if we cannot at least abolish all physical punishment for girls in our schools. This is 1956. The regulations were altered in 1946. Let the 1956 modification have as its aim to do away with the beating of our girls in our schools altogether. I should like to quote the views of a woman teacher, an enlightened educationist, in a most compelling article on discipline in schools, published in the Church of Ireland Gazette on February 17th, 1956, by Kathleen Heard, whom I do not know, but with whose ideas I find myself very much in sympathy.
She says: "A teacher must respect her pupils"—which seems to me to be a point that is often forgotten—"must respect them——"
"and show them that she does respect them. She must not first demand respect from them at the point of the bayonet, or with that attitude. When pupils see that she is worthy of respect they will give it.
"Obedience and good (?) discipline achieved by many rules and punishments will not, generally, last when schooldays are over, and I firmly believe that any corporal punishment, however mildly or reluctantly administered, is an evil thing. It is degrading to pupil and teacher. The weaker child will obey through fear and the ‘diehard' will always give trouble if forced to outward submission. He will take it out of those weaker than himself, and is all set to be a ‘juvenile delinquent' when he leaves.
"The ‘bend-over' type of discipline, canes, leather strap, rulers and the human fist, are all weapons of war. The race conquered by such means is naturally resentful. It is not a fair fight. The children are not armed."
She says further on, speaking of the schoolroom:—
"The schoolroom, above all places, should be the abode of harmony and quietness, and there should always be time for the pupil's mind to work. A child cannot always think as quickly as he is expected to, and, if he disobeys, give him time to think it over."
She says, again,—
"They (that is, the children) must, of course, be trained in self-control— not temporary control from fear of the teacher. Temporary submission is not self-control."
The final quotation I would quote from her is this: "Children," she says, "always describe their teachers as being either quiet or cross —as if they were bulls".
Now it seems to me that the attitude of mind which takes the opposite view to that expressed in this article, the attitude of those who believe that you can only get good out of a child, and, in particular, out of a small girl, by being prepared to beat discipline into her, is an attitude of mind to be deplored in relation to the education which is got by the majority of Irish children, those attending national schools.
I am aware, of course, that some people contend not only that the Minister should not change his regulations but that he has not got the right even to make these regulations. I heard Senator T.J. O'Connell—I am sorry he is not here, because I want to quote him—saying as much in this Seanad, denying that the Minister had the right to make any regulations at all governing corporal punishment. The quotation I wanted to give you is in Volume 45, No. 4, column 313, where he said:—
"It is questionable whether the Department of Education has the right to make regulations which would limit the right of the teacher to administer reasonable corporal punishment."
I should like to say at this juncture, as I see that the Minister has just arrived, that I am sorry the Minister has not found it possible to be present till now, though I realise that it may not be fair to expect him to be in attendance at the Seanad, after a very long day at the Dáil—I understand he was in the Dáil at 10.30 a.m.—so that I find myself rather in the position of keeping him in after school.
I hope he will forgive me for that. I should like to say that I do appreciate the Minister's coming up here personally when I am sure he must be feeling rather weary after listening to a good deal of talk in the other House.
The point I am making here is that certain people actually question the Minister's right to make these regulations limiting the right of teachers to administer reasonable corporal punishment. I should like to know what the Minister says to that? According to Senator O'Connell, these Department regulations, which I am asking to have modified, are already ultra vires, because Senator O'Connell contends that, in making this type of regulation, the Department of Education has already overstepped its powers. Senator O'Connell actually went on, later in the same column of the same debate, to imply it was to humiliate the teacher that the British Government introduced this type of regulation, limiting the amount of corporal punishment to be inflicted on Irish children! It must surely seem rather surprising that he says in the same column that these Department regulations “are a modified form of regulations issued over 50 years ago by an authority which was an alien administration in this country. The fixed policy of that administration... was always to distrust and humiliate the teacher, whenever that could be done.”
I would suggest to Senator O'Connell, if he were here, that it does not humiliate a factory owner or necessarily signify distrust of him, if we lay down certain sanitary regulations which he must abide by in running his factory. Nor, indeed, is any genuine teacher humiliated by regulations which are sound. Consequently, I disagree with the contention that the Minister has no right to make such regulations. I hold that the Minister has a perfect right to make such regulations, and to modify them, as I am now asking, as the occasion arises.
The present regulations, as we know, allow corporal punishment only for grave transgressions, for boys and girls alike. It is one of the points upon which between the sexes we have equality in this country. There are not very many, but, for once, here the girls have an equal right with the boys to be physically chastised in our schools. In fact, the girls—they are the subject of my motion—are very much involved in this question of corporal punishment in our schools, although it is true that some people forget entirely, when we are talking about corporal punishment in our schools, that we are talking about girls as well as boys. Not so long ago, I noted that a lecturer from Roscommon accused certain unnamed people of trying to turn "the grievances of schoolboys" into a national issue. I would affirm that the question of the manner in which corporal punishment is applied in our schools is a national issue, but it does not concern boys alone: it also concerns girls. That is why I put down this motion.
If, as some people contend, this right to beat small girls is hardly ever used, then I would ask the Minister to make the experiment of stopping it altogether for girls—that is the purpose of my motion—and observe the result. If, in fact, it is hardly ever used, what enormous harm can come from stopping it altogether in relation to girls? I would ask the Minister to make that experiment. Does anybody here consider that, if the beating of small girls in our schools were to be abolished altogether by the modification of regulations, the results would be disastrous? That is clearly nonsense.
If, on the other hand, as I claim, this right to apply corporal punishment to small girls is, in fact, used far too much for minor offences, then remove from the regulations this "grave transgression" permission, at least for girls, and abolish corporal punishment for girls altogether. In either case, I suggest the Minister should accept my motion.
I am now going to suggest two possible reasons why the Minister and his Department are, as I said on the last occasion, so resolutely and indomitably ill-informed on the matter of the amount of corporal punishment that is, in fact, administered in our schools.
One reason is that a good deal of the corporal punishment so administered is systematically concealed from Department inspectors. I remember one child writing to me, having left school for some years, saying that her "first lesson in hypocrisy" came from the hiding away of straps and canes on the day the inspector was arriving. That is one reason why the Department do not know fully what goes on, because the amount of corporal punishment administered is so concealed from the representatives of the Minister's Department.
The second reason is that many parents, who know perfectly well that it goes on for all kinds of minor offences in direct contravention of the regulations, have not got the stamina necessary for the successful exposure of a breach of the regulations. And I can assure you that it takes quite considerable stamina! I should like to quote a case. It is a case that will be in the files of the Department. It started in October, 1953, when a small girl, aged 9½, received 13 slaps with a pointer in class for getting three sums wrong, that is to say, she had corporal punishment administered for mere failure at lessons. The circumstances were that in the class three slaps were to be given for the first sum wrong and five for each subsequent incorrect answer. This child only missed three and only got 13 slaps. This little girl, aged 9½, came home in a bruised and distressed state, having been slapped for "mere failure at lessons" in direct contravention of the regulations. What happened? The incident was corroborated by her elder sister and by two other children in the presence of this girl's mother. What action did the parents take? What action did the Department of Education take? The mother went to the school, as was the correct thing to do. She saw the principal of the school and she got no satisfaction there. She was not allowed to see the teacher. She went to the school manager and the school manager said he "would hear no criticism of a school of which he had heard nothing but praise." It is quite clear, of course, why he heard no criticism when he would listen to nothing but praise.
Having followed, in fact, the instructions given by the Minister for Education on the last occasion when he addressed the Seanad, and having remonstrated with the school and the manager, the mother wrote to the Department of Education, reported all the facts, and asked what were the rules. At that time she did not know that the rules actually precluded any such infliction of corporal punishment. In reply, the Department sent her a copy of the regulations and acknowledged her letter. Subsequently, there was a public denunciation in the school of "little Judases who tell their mammies when they are hit." The mother, I think rightly, transferred the child to another school in December, 1953. One day, in the first week during which the same child was in the second school, she saw 16 girls being caned for missing questions. She was not herself caned because she answered correctly, but she was upset by the spectacle of these 16 girls being beaten. She was upset—and she was frightened. Now, the mother, knowing by this time the rules and regulations, called at the school, saw the principal teacher, produced the Department's regulations and was told that, if it had been known that she would insist on the Department's regulations being applied, her children would not have been accepted in the school. The mother, again quite rightly, wrote to the Department, and after three months of fruitless endeavour to get some kind of satisfaction from the Minister, she proceeded, only after the lapse of these three months, to write to the Evening Mail.
