Issue No. 7: WHACKO!

All of my teachers in the Infants and Junior schools were women, except for the last two years at the Junior school. Here, in the five classes which comprised the Third Year and in the five classes which made up the Fourth Year, the male teachers took charge. My recollection is that these men were a pretty brutal bunch and corporal punishment was rife. Nobody was spared the rod and the fact that you may have been clever and/or a girl did not particularly count.

The classes were all 40 plus kids, and graded A to E on a descending academic rating. You had the same teacher for the last two years. I was in the A class and my teacher was Mr Crusher. Mr Crusher's sole priority was to get as many of his charges as possible through the 11 plus exams, and we were mercilessly drilled for two years to achieve that objective. His standards were high but his punishments were severe for perceived failure. So, poor results in spelling tests or arithmetic, etc. resulted in the cane.

Mr Crusher had two canes, a thick one and a thin one. Both hurt like hell but the thin one was the worst. Mr Crusher was a big, broad-shouldered man in his early forties and he used to put his full force behind his caning. His speciality, with the thin cane particularly, was to bring it down right on the end of your fingertips. If you had two or three whacks at a time, it used to skin your fingers. He measured his strokes very precisely to ensure maximum effect. If you were stupid enough to move your hand away so that he missed, the punishment was doubled.

For every child caned there was a different 'danse macarbre'. In anticipation of being whacked, some kids shouted 'Outcha!' before the blow had actually landed. Maybe they hoped to put Mr Crusher off his aim; they never did. Others hopped from one foot to another between strokes, like a Red Indian dance. Others waved their stricken hands behind their backs in a vain attempt to cool the pain. Only the bravest did not cry during the ordeal or afterwards at their desks.

There was one very small girl in our class called Mary Meek, who was one of the worst spellers. These days Mary's problems would probably be recognised as mild dyslexia and there would be specialist help available. Then, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, punishment was the only recourse. Every Friday afternoon we would be handed back our marked spelling tests from the day before. Every Friday Mary and others would be whacked for poor results. One particular Friday, in the Fourth Year, Mary finally snapped when Mr Crusher called out her name to come forward to the front of the class. She refused to leave her desk. Mr Crusher had a very short temper and shouted at her to come forward. She did not budge. He leapt out of his seat and marched up her row, grabbed her and dragged her, sobbing and clinging on to all of the desks on the way, to the front of the class. He pulled out his thin cane, yanked her arm forward, made her extend her palm and thrashed her three times as hard as he could. Broken in spirit, she staggered back to her desk, choking on her sobs all of the way, and then buried her head in her hands. We were all stunned and petrified at the brutality and ferocity of it all. Mr Crusher then visibly composed himself, clenching and unclenching his big fist, straightening his tie and brushing his hair back with his hand. Then, in as calm a voice as he could muster, he said:

'Mary Meek, you are a stupid and hysterical girl. All I was going to do was to praise you for getting eight out of ten for your spelling test today.'