THE BROTHERS REPUTATION
A delegate to the 1947 General Chapter of the Christian Brothers made reference to the ‘most unenviable reputation’ that the Christian Brothers had acquired with regard to corporal punishment. This reputation is real – nearly all popular references to the Christian Brothers refer to their fearsome classroom discipline. ‘Irish Christian Brothers’ = ‘International Child Beaters’ in one humourist’s estimation.
Most Christian Brothers over two centuries used corporal punishment in classrooms – however, this was hardly unique, such punishments being normal at that time. The image of the Christian Brothers is that they were unusually severe.
The paper intends to examine the truth of the reputation of unusual severity in comparison to others, and if it finds it to be a myth, will attempt to find the origin of the myth.