Punished for Bad School Report8

At my school it was a system. Punishments were ordered in writing, signed and dated by the teacher, and you had the right of appeal to the Rector of the school. I don’t ever remember him supporting any boy’s appeal, but it might have happened. Still, there was a kind of order in it which gave it the illusion of respectability. You can say that it was your own misbehaviour that caused the punishment, not the whim of the teacher, but you can say the same about being “flogged around the fleet” in Napoleonic times. The fact is that our school was a very violent school, but very little of that violence was coming from the boys. The continual imposition of violent punishments for non-violent offences was a blatant breach of Christian morality, and cannot be defended on the grounds that “it was expected” or “we had to accept it” or “it was part of the ethos” or suchlike justifications.