Never a tawser

Cut to Carluke Primary, Mrs White's class: Mrs White's nose is wrinkling because some of us boys have had our hair plastered down by a noxious concoction devised by the local barber. It was green and sold in Rose’s Marmalade jars and worked by gluing each strand of hair to its neighbour. Perhaps it was Rose’s (lime) Marmalade. Mr Peebles the headmaster comes in. "Excuse me please, Mrs White." He points to John Sculler, the biggest boy in the class. We all know that John threw a snowball that hit a teacher.         

"Out here!" They pass through the doorway. The door is closed behind them and angry shouts can be heard from Mr Peebles, a man who rarely has to raise his voice. There is a brief pause, a faint rustle and:

Tishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! We all picture the belt searing through the air from its hiding place under the shoulder of the headmaster's jacket.

                "Gung!" A choked, gasping sob, followed by a terrible howling. "Oooh hooo hooo!"

Enter Mr Peebles to calmly and firmly explain what the crime had been and why John had been belted. He could also have offered us a definition of deterrence.

Indeed, it was two years before John was in as much trouble again. This time he demonstrated that the worst part of the punishment was the build up. Mrs Glenmuir was talking about worms and the worm casts they left behind. John thought that "worm cast" was a bit of a euphemism.

                "Shite," he sniggered, just a little too loudly.

                "What did you say?" asked our teacher. A lifetime of snapping "what did you say?" had given her voice a robotic edge. Think: “Exterminate! Exterminate!”

                "Nothing." John didn't sound as if he believed it himself and the grins of those around him must have been a bit of a give-away.

                "You did not say nothing!" It wasn't the time to query Mrs Glenmuir's use of the double negative. "Come out and stand here!"

She exited, chin first, backside following a full three seconds later, a bit like a human bendy-bus. Only certain primary teachers, in a full flush of outrage, can walk like that.

When she returned she had Mr Peebles for company. In her absence, John had been in the unenviable position of having to contemplate the consequences of his remark while the rest of us were still smirking at it.

                "Now, what did you say?" Mrs Glenmuir repeated. John's lips trembled a little as he stood in the headmaster's shadow but he said nothing.

                "What did you say?" This time it was said with such vehemence that John stepped back.

There was a sniff and a squeak. "Shite." The word wasn't funny anymore.

                "Outside!" commanded Mr Peebles.

Tishhhhhhhhhhhhh! Gung! Oooh hooo hooo!

Beltings at our primary school were rare and I managed to avoid the strap altogether. I did get rulered, made to stand in the corner and forced to sing in front of the class. In the last case it was not clear who was being punished. All of this was accepted. The only time I felt ill at ease about pre-secondary corporal punishment was when a young male supply teacher stood in for our regular primary three teacher and, on more than one occasion, gave a friend of mine a hard slap on the face. I was belted at secondary school. The man who administered the punishment was a Mr Coulter, a very pleasant fellow. I ended up working alongside him a couple of years after I finished college and rarely cast it up to him, mentioning the belting only every other time we met.

Mr Coulter was teaching history to our first year class when another teacher came into the room to talk to him. Most of us began to chatter. When the other teacher left, Mr Coulter, still apparently his usual, genial self, asked: "Now, come on. Be honest. How many of you were talking while I was?" A large number of honest hands went up. "Boys out here!" he said curtly. "Girls get an essay!"

Each boy got two of the belt. For a while after I felt as if I had giant, throbbing, cartoon character hands. I looked at them now and again in a detached sort of way. They were red dappled with white but still in proportion to the rest of my body.

It was quite sore. So was the ruler but neither was administered by a sadist. They ranked as demonstrations of the teacher's extreme displeasure rather than human rights-violating physical violence. Being made to stand in front of the class and sing was a lot worse.

Ultimately I was rather glad to have been belted by Mr Coulter. It was part of the nineteen sixties/ seventies school experience. I can say this lightly because being belted never did me any harm. Seeing someone else on the receiving end of the tawse had a much greater effect on me.

Edward Baron was the hard man of our second year class.  He had long hair- really long hair, not just the "over the ears" style popular in the seventies, and stubbed-fag eyes. He sneered with every part of his body at teachers and at wee guys like me. I didn't like him even before he put a road cone on my head while I waited for the Carluke bus. Mr Hutt was an art teacher with the sort of stare that suggested he ran a motel in his spare time, the sort where it was inadvisable to take a shower or ask after his mother.

One day, as part of his civic duties, Edward let out a protracted, watery belch. Greeeeek! It was like a large frog down a deep well. It earned him three of what turned out to be the very best. He was howling and shaking his head after one but Mr Hutt persisted with the other two. If the intention had been that we kept our flatulence very much to ourselves in the future then our teacher succeeded. If he wanted at least one of the onlookers to be in fear of going to art for a year then he scored there too.

I am too young to have been allowed to belt as a teacher. Sometimes I fantasise about what it would have been like. I could have been Clint Eastwood, the man with no nickname. A kid would give me cheek. I'd look at him, saying nothing. Somewhere, a bell would toll. He'd look at me. I'd look back at him and he'd open his mouth to speak. I'd already be going for the belt inside my jacket and he'd never get the words out. Or I could have been an Indiana Jones-type trickster, flicking a piece of gum from a kid's hand or leaving the mark of Zorro on a jotter. What a tawser I could have been!

A colleague who'd started teaching a year or two before I did explained the reality of the situation. She hadn't become a teacher in order to hit children. Since she was a non-belter in a culture where belting was the way discipline was enforced, things got almost irretrievably out of hand. She was told by another member of staff that she'd have to use the strap so she took one home and practised by putting a slipper on her bed and thrashing it. Then she went back to work and sorted out her classes. The same lady has excellent discipline in the enlightened belt-free age and is the sort of teacher who is both respected and regarded with affection by her charges.

Those who express the view that there has been a drastic fall in the standards of behaviour in schools probably grew up in a school system where they were separated from the troublemakers at an early age. Do they really want to return to an era where a seven year-old could be walloped for making a spelling mistake? We live in better, happier times.