Corporal issue
Sir: I have only just noticed, in your 3 October issue, a considerable error (based no doubt on sloppy newspaper reports) in the 'Portrait of the Week'. The European Court of Human Rights has in fact not yet, at the time of writing, announced its decision on the two cases before it relating to corporal punishment in schools. The question at issue is not, as you state, whether school beatings are degrading in themselves — that will come up later in a different case — but whether a school's refusal to respect the wishes of parents who do not want their • children to be beaten constitutes a failure to provide an education in accordance with the parents' philosophical convictions and is thus a breach of the convention.
Your note goes on to report that 'a few optimists in STOPP predicted that this [the Court's decision] would end the practice' of beating children at school. We do not think we are being too optimistic in saying that, if the Court does uphold the Commission's findings against the British government, the end of corporal punishment will at last be in sight. It would then be illegal for teachers to beat children whose parents opposed the practice. Faced with the problem of being able to beat some children but not others, many schools or local authorities might well decide to do away with the wretched business altogether.
Paul Temperton
Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment, 10 Lennox Gardens, Croydon, Surrey
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