The Future of Birching The enquiry announced by the Home
Secretary into the birching of boys is to be welcomed. The reaction of public sentiment against any form of corporal punishment has been carried far—perhaps too far—but instructed medical opinion is increasingly hostile to physical punishment, and it would have been abolished before now but for its popularity with the House of Lords, which insisted on providing for it in the Children Act of 1932. The fact remains, none the less, that the problem of the punishment of boys in cases, for example, of persistent cruelty to animals or other children, is genuinely difficult. There is no reason on the face of it why an occasional birching should be open to more objection than an occasional caning at a public school. At the same time, If the committee pronounces against the practkie no one will shed tears over its abolition. But the problem of devising an alternative deterrent will still call for solution. The theory that every vice can be cured by kindness will unfortunately not stand scrutiny.
Previous page
