grahamhobbs wrote:[quote="pelmetman")
My point was not so much about our justice system, but about instilling a sense of right and wrong into kids at an early age, which seems to me the most basic building block from where to start a child's upbringing......
Pelmetman did you have corporal punishment at your school, did it teach you right and wrong. It only taught me to disrespect those teachers that used it and to question all authority.[/quote]
I never had the cane
.........But in Junior school "Monkey Moore", picked me up and hurled me across the classroom for talking in class
...........It worked I never spoke out of place in his class again
I've lost count of the times I was hit with a well aimed blackboard rubber, no doubt a skill long since lost by the teaching profession
As for learning right from wrong, like Big Al I learn't that from the hands of my mother
.........We never told her if we had been told off at school because we would get another dressing down or a belt from her.
One little example of how we learn't right from wrong
............My older brother was brought home by the police once, for nicking sweets, which is somewhat ironic as we had a sweet shop in front of our hairdressers ...........today a child psychologist would call it "pushing the boundaries"
..........The police said they wouldn't press charges as it was a first offence............My mother thanked the policeman and marched my brother upstairs to the 2 bed flat where the 6 of us lived, and got him in the kitchen and started belting the living daylights out of him
..........Our mum was 5 foot nothing just skin and bone, my brother a little taller but well built as he used to work out, but he was terrified as were the rest of us kids
.......My old man said nothing, discipline was always mums job
After a while she sprained her wrist beating my brother............did she stop........no.......she got hold of him with her good hand and started kicking him
Eventually she was exhausted and all us kids run and hid in the bedroom
..................None of us were ever brought home by the police again
Did school discipline make me question their authority?...........No......my beef with school was that they were only interested in the academic kids, so by the time I was 14 I was wasting my time
........I'm with Digby Jones
.....I would allow kids like me to leave at 14 and get an apprenticeship or any other job