The response to that announcement by one of the largest teachers' unions was a threat to instruct its members to refuse to administer other forms of punishment, such as detention. Whether it is barbaric might best be answered by remembering that some forms of mental punishment would make a good thrashing look kindly. The major criticism of corporal punishment is probably neither of these, but the fact that it is not particularly effective. The answer is very simply that corporal punishment is one form of sanction which teachers can use. Those most in favour of its retention would doubtless change their attitude if they felt that there were better alternatives.
British teachers have remarkably few sanctions at their disposal.
Expulsion, exclusion and suspension are so fraught with legal difficulties that it is the wrongdoer who often ends up looking like the hero. Comprehensive schools, with children travelling long distances to attend them, have found detention systems difficult, if not impossible to operate. Add to this the fact that many schools have in them children who should be in special institutions, but for whom there is no room. To ban corporal punishment without a careful examination of the whole system of sanctions recalls a magistrate of my acquaintance who, having before her a child who had been using his wellingtons to walk on the electrified railway, promptly confiscated the wellingtons.