Boys Laugh, When Caned by Women, to ‘Keep Their Dignity’

Daily Mirror, London, 14 April 1936, p.4

Easter Talkies

Men Teachers Demanded for Them

“If he acknowledged that he would have lost the dignity and recognition of his own importance.””In schools where headmistresses inflict corporal punishment on boys of eight or nine, the lads all go out laughing at the punishment they receive because not one of them dare acknowledge that a woman could hurt a ‘man’ of nine. This revelation of the boy psychology was made by Mr. F.H. Russell, of Bristol, at the Schoolmasters’ Conference at Sheffield yesterday. The conference demanded that all boys above infant age should be taught by men teachers. Mr. Russell said that to a boy of eight, nine or ten, sex was the first of the most fundamental requirements. His reactions were vital to the whole of his life. He wanted at that age to get away from the woman’s control. If the State refused the demand of that boy’s soul for the control of a man, the State was definitely injuring his development.