Xavier College, Kew, Victoria, Australia. I attended this school from 1989-1992 (having attended one of its two junior schools, Kostka Hall, from 1985-1988 – the other junior school is Burke Hall, mentioned in the quotes). I never experienced corporal punishment at the senior school – was threatened with it a couple of times. The books […]

I don’t think it hurt at all. But I was 13 – I was one of the oldest boys in the school, I had a really high opinion of myself and thought I was very grown up. And this happened in public – dozens of people saw it. I disintegrated into tears. I was totally […]

I guess it’s true that Brother McD didn’t hit that hard – but it was still easily hard enough to make an impression on a ten year old. Back when I was ten, he used to carry a strap in his pocket in the playground as he had for many years. But he stopped doing […]

COMMENTS: I left this school in 1988 at age 13 – so towards the end of the time they still used the strap. I have to say if its use had rapidly declined at that time, it must have been used an awful lot in the past. There were sixty boys in my year level […]

  ‘Once outside for play and lunch breaks, boys saw more of those who had special responsibilities in the play area. Brother McDonald, for example, “was the disciplinarian with the strap in the school yard. You really weren’t a Kostka boy, it used to be said, unless you’d been strapped by Brother McDonald. But he […]

The 1980s saw the beginning of a completely new approach to discipline. Peter Hawkins and Malcolm Joseph drew up the Kostka Hall School Rules in 1986, with the aim of setting specific goals for boys’ behaviour and focusing on acceptable boundaries. The rules covered behaviour in such areas as travelling to school, classrooms, lunch breaks, […]

He had taught previously at St Patrick’s College where he was Prefect of Discipline. He also taught Geography, History, and later Latin to Years 7 and 8, and introduced the study of Civics into the school curriculum. Students and parents remember him as a reliable and highly organised teacher and as an excellent sports coach. […]

In the 1970s there was no written policy in relation to discipline, which was approached much as it had been in earlier years and was mainly based on responding to boys’ unacceptable behaviour such as homework not done, disobedience or misbehaviour in the yard. Penals were held twice a week after school, and the strap […]

  “He said he would start to tell us about the Jesuit traditions, about how discipline was most important for boys, and that while you were under the Jesuits at Kostka, and later at Xavier, discipline was the most important thing in the school program. He said, “There are a few rules around here. One […]

Until recent years many Jesuits and some lay staff used the strap to punish certain kinds of misbehaviour – never more than six cuts per boy per day was the rule. Penals, a form of detention in which students were usually set lines to write, was another form of discipline. But for most student it […]