Hi, I’m Anthony and I live in Greater London, although up until a couple of years ago, I lived in Inner London which was where, as a child, I went to school and learned all the things that the system in those days considered a requirement of future life as a responsible adult .
Learning back then in this country was obligatory. If one did not learn something, one was physically beaten with a cane, either on the hand or the rump. Even a lesser punishment was carried out with a smack of the hand. And because it was the way things were and had been since Julius Caesar had been asked to leave for not paying his council tax, it was accepted by all and sundry.
Now, it is a different story. We have problems in the cities where carrying a gun at fifteen is fast becoming the in-thing. Four shot dead in their own homes in the same borough in almost the same week. And the people in control of this country blame it on lack of schooling and parental control.
What amazes me most is that kids rebelled when it was suggested that corporal punishment be returned to the class but these same kids are quite happy to go out and shoot someone and live in a society where they themselves could end up on the receiving end of a .45 calibre vasectomy.
It seems to me that what we have here is a viscous circle. Ensure by hook or crook (or cane) that kids a decent education and in turn they will attempt to see that their children get the same thing and with this decent education come far better opportunities for employment, which in turn will take the street gangs out of the loop.
But, the dilemma is that the people that pretend to run this country are afraid to put corporal punishment back into the schools. (They might loose that next election) Which is very sad because this country has had generations of people pass through a system where physical punishment was accepted routinely and with the odd few exceptions, none of those people wanted to go round mugging old ladies or holding babies up by the throat while the young defenceless mother handed over her child support money?
The corporal punishment that schools meted out in those days also had a second and more important aspect as well, in that it prepared us for the Capital punishment that was waiting for us should we be stupid enough to commit a capital crime.
Also back then, there were borstals set up for ‘naughty’ children who were too young for prison and while some went on to become great train robbers and the like, the majority decided that once was enough.
We now have, thanks to the do-gooders in both this country and Europe a nation of petrified pensioners and kids who prefer to go out killing or maiming instead of doing a normal days work and a generation of parents that don’t give a damn.
When I think of what kind of society my grandchildren are going to be compelled to grow up in, it makes me go cold.
Those people who believe that by taking the punishment out of the schools they have created a far better system now, like the rest of us, have to live with what they have created,
For all they have achieved by taking the punishment out of the government controlled education system, is to allow it to grow out of all proportion in society itself.
I just hope that they are proud of the world they have created.
