‘The way these folk talk,’ said Mr Brown, Deputy Head and Principal Teacher of English, ‘you’d think we spent our whole day belting defenceless weans.’
‘You give some pest one of the strap to keep him in line,’ said Mr Campbell, Principal Teacher of Mathematics, ‘and they call it corporal punishment.’
‘Then in the next sentence it becomes flogging,’ said the Principal Teacher of Modern Languages, Mr Kerr.
He read aloud from the offensive letter.
‘Hyperbole,’ said Mr Brown.
‘They think we’re a shower of bloody sadists,’ said Mr Dale, the youngest member of staff. ‘They’ve no idea.’
‘The strap is only a convention here,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘Up to second year anyway. You don’t need it much after that. But if you abolished it altogether you’d raise more problems than you solved.’
‘It’s like the language of a country,’ said Mr Alfred from his lonely corner. ‘You’ve got to speak it to be understood.’
His colleagues hushed and looked at him. He seldom opened his mouth during their discussions. He seemed to think himself above them. They were surprised to hear his voice.
Mr Alfred acknowledged their attention by taking his cigarette out of his mouth. He went on chattily as if he was giving a reminiscent talk on the Light Programme.
‘I remember one school I worked in. There was a young Latin teacher next door to me. Very young he was. He wouldn’t use the strap he told me. He thought the language of the strap was a barbaric language. He would speak to the natives in his own civilised tongue. He would be all sweetness and light like Matthew Arnold.’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried Mr Dale.
‘Bloody fool,’ muttered Mr Brown.
Mr Alfred smiled agreeably to them both and continued his talk.
‘But when the natives found he refused to speak their language their pride was hurt. They felt he was insulting their tribal customs. They regarded him as a mad foreigner. They sniped at him till they saw it was safe to make an open attack. Within a week they were making his life hell on earth.’
‘Boys can be cruel to a weak teacher,’ said Mr Campbell.
‘He was baited and barbed,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘By defenceless children,’ said Mr Brown.
‘Until he broke under the torture,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘Once they think you’re soft they’ve no mercy,’ said Mr Kerr.
‘He went berserk one day,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘He thrashed a boy across the legs and buttocks and shoulders with the very strap he had wanted to put into a museum.’
‘Probably the least troublesome boy,’ said Mr Campbell.
‘It usually is,’ said Mr Kerr.
‘It was,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I heard the row. I heard the boy run screaming from the room as if the devil were after him. I nipped out in time to catch him in the corridor and managed to pacify him. I took him to the toilets and had him wash his face and calm down. I like to think I stopped what could have been a serious complaint from the parent.’
‘It would never have happened if he had used the strap just once the day he arrived,’ said Mr Campbell.
‘Precisely my point,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘I always let a new class see I’ve got a strap and let them know I’ll use it,’ said Mr Dale. ‘After that I’ve no bother. If you show the flag you don’t need to fire the guns.’
‘And you know,’ said Mr Alfred, ‘the tawse of the Scotch dominie is never wielded like the Jesuit’s pandy bat that distressed the young Stephen Dedalus. Not that the pandy bat did Joyce any harm. It gave him material. It showed him what life is like. These letterwriters would have us deceive the boys by pretending they’ll never be punished later on in life when they do something wrong. And even if a boy is strapped unjustly it isn’t fatal. Life is full of minor injustices. A boy should learn as much while he’s still at school, and learn to take it without whining. I admire the heroes of history who fought against social injustice, but one of the strap given in error or loss of patience is hardly a wrong on that scale.’
He put his cigarette back in his mouth and withdrew from the discussion. He thought he had said all that needed saying about corporal punishment.
‘The way I see it,’ said Mr Campbell, ‘the strap is our symbol of authority within a recognised code. The boys know what to expect and we can get on with the job.’
‘You must have something to maintain discipline,’ said Mr Kerr. ‘Some quick sanction. Even if you never use it.’
‘No discipline, no learning,’ said Mr Brown.
‘But tell me this,’ said Mr Dale. ‘What do you do if a boy refuses to take the strap?’
‘Only a stupid teacher would create a situation where that would happen,’ said Mr Campbell.
‘But supposing,’ said Mr Dale.
‘It’s a case for the headmaster then,’ said Mr Brown.
‘I’ve never met many cases of a boy refusing the strap,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘And those I have, they all came to nothing. The boy had to submit in the end and apologise. Then of course once he gets a public apology the teacher acts the big man. He won’t condescend to strap the boy. The rebel ends up looking a bit of an ass.’
‘Well, I’m deputy-boss here,’ said Mr Brown, ‘and I’ve never had any boy refuse the strap. We don’t seem to get that kind of stupid defiance.’
So it was an occasion for headlines when Gerald defied Mr Alfred and kept on defying him the morning after the fight in the Weavers Lane.
Before proposing to strap him Mr Alfred told the class what he had seen in the Weavers Lane. He said those who egged boys on to fight were worse than the boys who came to blows. Even a good boy might get into a fight if he thought his honour was at stake. He would fight in case his classmates jeered at him if he didn’t. That was silly. Nothing was ever solved by violence. Still, it was a pardonable mistake in a young person. But few boys would fight at all if nobody talked them into thinking they had to. This was usually done by trouble-makers who took jolly good care never to risk their own precious skin. It was a far, far better thing to tell your schoolmates there was no need to fight. Our saviour said, Blessed are the peacemakers. The really wicked ones were those who were not content to start two boys fighting with their bare fists but got them to use belts and even brought a knife into it. They were not blessed like the peacemakers. They deserved a deep damnation more than a ticking off.
He spoke very well and enjoyed having the class hushed at his rhetoric. Then he said quietly, ‘Come out Gerald Provan.’
He raised his strap.
‘You know what I’ve been talking about. You know why I’m going to punish you.’
Gerald refused to hold his hand out. He said he had done nothing wrong, it was after four o’clock when he was in the Weavers Lane, Mr Alfred had no right, he was picking on him. He spoke with a rough insolence. His tongue darted between his lips and he went through the motion of spitting at Mr Alfred’s feet.
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