25 JULY 1981, Page 6

Another voice

On caning the handicapped

A uberon Waugh Every Wednesday the Daily Mirror prints a most interesting column called Paul Foot Investigates, or possibly Paul Foot Reporting. In it, Mr Foot regularly gives examples of the beastly behaviour of the rich, the admirable behaviour of the poor. A frequent subject of his concern is to point out any individual or public body which has fallen short of the very high standards we have all set ourselves for the treatment of handicapped persons during the Year of the Disabled. Thus we learn of some wretched local Council which is planning to close down its Handicapped Persons' Rest and Recreation Centre, of Lord Tomnoddy who is refusing to widen all the doors in Tomnoddy Hall to allow persons in invalid carriages to go through, of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's which has refused to move away the steps in front of St Paul's Cathedral to allow easier access to a wheelchair army on the Big Day. Wicked. Disgraceful. Vile.

All of which is very salutary, and I hope that Mr Foot is made a Member of the Victorian Order (Fifth Class) in recognition of his work for Disabled People at the end of the year. But I never cease to be amazed by the ineptitude of the Royal Family on every point where they have a say — like the catering arrangements for the Royal Wedding, or even Prince Charles's decision to have two Best Men — and it seems possible that Mr Foot's work for the International Year of the Disabled may be overlooked. More's the pity. But my own prize for the best headline in this field would not go to the Daily Mirror, but to an unknown sub-editor on the parliamentary page of the Daily Telegraph who, on Saturday, produced this masterpiece: 'Yesterday in Parliament: Peers reject ban on school caning for handicapped.'

Perhaps a few people were alarmed by this headline but to many others, I suspect, it was a comforting assurance that the government of the country goes on. Miles away from Mr Prior's frenzied plans to 'mploy the nation's entire youth by giving every school-leaver a `job' in Government training schemes as a cure for the riots. miles away from the Wigan debate about Ivhether non-lesbian women should be allowed to adopt babies, or the London planners' agony about whether Nelson's Column should be moved from Trafalgar Square in case a Disabled Person bumps into it one night, the House of Lords preserves the calm and even tenor of its ways. Having considered whether handicapped children should continue to be caned in government schools and having debated the matter calmly among themselves, the peers have decided that they should continue to be caned. Afterwards, no doubt, they all retired to the terrace for cucumber sandwiches.

Of course there is much to be said on both sides. Lord Beaumont of Whitley, who introduced the subject as an amendment to the Education Bill, pitched it rather high, I thought, and may have set a few of their Lordships' backs up, saying it was almost incredible that corporal punishment on handicapped children had not been banned before, intolerable that there should be a need to ban it now and incredible that there should be any opposition to it. He was opposed to corporal punishment under almost all circumstances, he said, but there was an `overwhelming and irrefutable case' for banning it against handicapped children.

This sort of demagoguery might work at a Tribune meeting in Blackpool, but it jolly well doesn't work in the House of Lords. Of course there is something exceptionally distasteful in the idea of beating a handicapped child who might have no arms or no legs, but what alternative does Lord Beaumont propose? The Dunce's Cap? Extra prep? Electric shocks? I think we should be told.

Lady Jeger, Opposition spokesman on education, corporal punishment etc took the argument a stage further, saying she welcomed the ban on beating handicapped children as a step towards banning corporal punishment altogether. This, as they say, is an entirely different ball-game. There is indeed a case to be made for banning corporal punishment in all schools and for everyone, on the grounds that it encourages sadism among masters, violence among pupils and is not a particularly effective deterrent. On balance, I feel I probably subscribe to this view myself, although my own judgment may be influenced by unpleasant memories. The beating of girls has always seemed to me an exceptionally horrible thing, advocated only by people who are seriously disturbed in one way or another, and even if one suspects that boys are born to be beaten, just as pheasants are born to be shot and deer to be hunted, one knows in one's heart of hearts that it doesn't really do them much good. On the other hand, it probably doesn't do them much harm, either, and if it gives so many teachers so much pleasure it might be kinder to leave things as they are. The main question is not whether it is an effective form of punishment — no other country needs it — but whether it seriously harms the teachers and, on this point, I find I belong to both the `don't knows' and 'don't cares'.

But it is an entirely different thing from saying that all corporal punishment is beastly and should be forbidden to say that a special privileged class should be created who under no circumstances may be beaten. As Lord Alexander of Potterhill, the 75-year-old Glaswegian educationalist, pointed out, the Bill which deals with children (or 'kids') of special educational needs does not confine itself to those missing a limb, or handicapped by some mental subnormality, but covers also those maladjusted children with major discipline problems. If the idea of creating a specially privileged class of physically handicapped children might create an incentive to parental mutilation, or even self-mutilation such as one sees among the beggars of Morocco, to include violent and disturbed children in the same class is an open invitation to delinquency.

Lady Young, the Minister of State, urged that headmasters should be allowed to decide, but I feel she misses the point.

Might as well allow the pupils to decide whether to be beaten as allow teachers to decide whether to beat them. But I was glad to see that the widow of a former editor of the Spectator, Lady Macleod, weighed in against the ban, saying that this may be the best possible way to treat children who are not normal youngsters.

I do not know whether she is right, although as a polio victim herself (as well as a magistrate) she may have insights which are denied Lady Jeger or Lord Beaumont. But I am sure the House was right to turn down its own suggestion of heaping further honours and privileges on this section of the community which, according to Lord Alex ander of Potterhill, now covers 20 per cent of children in our schools. And I must admit that as I pass the hideous and half-witted Bird Cage which disfigures a corner of Regent's Park, I can't help feeling that things might have been different if the young Tony Armstrong Jones had been beaten a little harder or more often during his Eton days.