For quite some time now, friends have been asking me about my views on the La Marteniere case in Calcutta.
A boy, Rouvanjit, was found hanging at his Alipore home, four days after being caned.
The father, an influential fellow [after all, many La Mart's parents are from the upper crust], lodged a complaint with Shakespeare Sarani police station, accusing the teachers of abetting his son’s suicide.
While I hold no brief for caning, [and it's become so bloody politically incorrect in certain circles to even suggest that a kid may actually benifit from a firm whack or two on his behind administered judiciously] may I say that the case should have been thrown out of the window in the first place.
If caning led to kids committing suicide, then over the past 100 years, there should have been hundreds of kids who ended up hanging from trees, rooftops, lavatories and what not.
I remember that when we were in school, and didn't do our mathematics homework, the teacher had this habit of sending offenders straight to the principal's office, school diary in hand. Dear old Father Tucker would give us two whacks with his jaipur sugar cane, one on each hand, and send us off. When he left to become Principal of the Tashi Namgyal Academy, on the specuial invtation of the Chogyal, to instil discipline in Sikkim's premier school, another priest, named George Karakunnel SJ became principal at St Xavier's Doranda. The kids enthusiastically called him 'Georgie Porgie' -- now this principal believed in the six-of-the-best remedy. You bend down and he whacked you on your sitting apparatus, and you left his office with a warm afterglow. He whacked the boys large and small, first-time offenders and seasoned rogues, alike.
No doubt, for us so-called 'good students', it was a frightful and shameful thing... going to the principal's office and getting a whack, and we tried our best to avoid such occurances. Our parents, thankfully had their heads screwed on in the right way, and if they came to know that we'd been whacked, they'd just say we deserved it, and would withold our pocket money as well.
Well, in the seven years I was in the school, and for several years after that, we didn't have a single suicide! Ergo, caning doesn't lead to suicide... and certainly not four days after the fact.
It's a load of poppycock.
[This in no way is to condone inhuman treatment of students by teachers, such as hitting them with dusters, whacking them over the head, and such .. but to blame this particular kid's suicide on a caning incident that's four days old is a load of hogwash.]
A boy, Rouvanjit, was found hanging at his Alipore home, four days after being caned.
The father, an influential fellow [after all, many La Mart's parents are from the upper crust], lodged a complaint with Shakespeare Sarani police station, accusing the teachers of abetting his son’s suicide.
While I hold no brief for caning, [and it's become so bloody politically incorrect in certain circles to even suggest that a kid may actually benifit from a firm whack or two on his behind administered judiciously] may I say that the case should have been thrown out of the window in the first place.
If caning led to kids committing suicide, then over the past 100 years, there should have been hundreds of kids who ended up hanging from trees, rooftops, lavatories and what not.
I remember that when we were in school, and didn't do our mathematics homework, the teacher had this habit of sending offenders straight to the principal's office, school diary in hand. Dear old Father Tucker would give us two whacks with his jaipur sugar cane, one on each hand, and send us off. When he left to become Principal of the Tashi Namgyal Academy, on the specuial invtation of the Chogyal, to instil discipline in Sikkim's premier school, another priest, named George Karakunnel SJ became principal at St Xavier's Doranda. The kids enthusiastically called him 'Georgie Porgie' -- now this principal believed in the six-of-the-best remedy. You bend down and he whacked you on your sitting apparatus, and you left his office with a warm afterglow. He whacked the boys large and small, first-time offenders and seasoned rogues, alike.
No doubt, for us so-called 'good students', it was a frightful and shameful thing... going to the principal's office and getting a whack, and we tried our best to avoid such occurances. Our parents, thankfully had their heads screwed on in the right way, and if they came to know that we'd been whacked, they'd just say we deserved it, and would withold our pocket money as well.
Well, in the seven years I was in the school, and for several years after that, we didn't have a single suicide! Ergo, caning doesn't lead to suicide... and certainly not four days after the fact.
It's a load of poppycock.
1 comment:
I waz amoozed at the cartoon of the massar whacking a stoodent with cane.
when I was a school boy them irish christian bruddurs were brutal guys.
But one of them was a bit kuinder. When we broke rules he would let us go free when we remined him that we had three or four licks in the bank(licks= good deeds)
The media has blown up the LaMart episode for sensation....
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