You can’t belt children into learning things
IT was the Scottish school’s weapon of choice against unruly kids and it was used in classrooms from the Highlands to the Borders – the tawse.
While students throughout the rest of the UK were punished by the cane or belt, Scottish teachers used this modified version of the belt – a thick leather whip with one end split into two tails.
“The culture of society completely accepted this – the parents were all for it,” Sir Tom Devine said this week in the BBC2 documentary, Growing Up In Scotland: A Century Of Childhood.
The first time I got the belt at school was because I gave a wrong answer to a mental arithmetic question.
Did I learn anything from it? No. It still took me two attempts at sitting O Level arithmetic before accepting I’d never pass it.
My friend Wilma was belted on a regular basis at our Coatbridge school by our English teacher for her deplorable spelling.
She still sends me cards and letters with imaginative spelling. You can’t belt people into learning how to count or spell.
The practice was banned from use in Scottish state schools in 1987.
I’m glad we’ve come a long way since the days of telling children: “Hold out your hand...”