Return Of The CANE To School. [To Cane Or Not To Cane?]

Parents and teachers have refused to back a return to corporal discipline in schools after Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott suggested that some children would only behave if threatened with the cane. Mr Abbott said more discipline in schools would pretevent brutal behaviour after watching footage of a vicious attack on a Melbourne school girl. But the teachers' union and the WA Council of State School Organisations said it was innapropriate to use violence to deal with misbehaving students. Mr Abbott told Sydney radio that when corporal punishment was in use, vicious incidents did not happen. "We have gone away from that and as our teachers get gentler the kids get more brutal," he said. "What we really need is to make sure we have strong discipline in our schools because disciplined kids are much less likely to engage in this kind of nonsense. He said teachers had few options open to them students misbehaved. "That's why I think there was an argument for the cane and strap, and I am not saying it was a compelling argument but it may well be that sometimes the only language kids understand is that kind of language. But when asked if he was calling for the return of the cane and strap he denied that he wanted to reintroduce corporal punishment. "No, I'm calling for strong discipline in our schools and I guess people can argue the toss about exactly how that might be imposed. Mr Abbott, who said he received the strap at the Jesuit school that he attended, said he did not want to be too precriptive. "But I do know that a lot of people think that sometimes you've got to be able to give a short, sharp shock to people, that's what corporal punishment was about as I seem to recall it," Educators seemed to put more stress on "understanding the kids and reasoning with them". "That's all good but in the end there has got to be authority, there's got to be rules, people have got to know the consequences if the rules are broken," he said. "And I wonder just how strong a lot of our teachers and our schools are on this." State School Teachers Union president Mike Keely said that schools were totally different from when Mr Abbott was a boy.

Basically, this means that there are people debating on whether to inforce having the cane in schools or not. I bet if you ask most students (including me!) we will say NO to reintroducing the cane. I guess the question here is "To cane or not to cane?" Let's hope the result is no cane ever again...

Do you think the cane should be brought back to school or stay in the closet for the next 1000 years? Comment me!