Sparing the Rod

If it is true that caning and cold baths serve to develop moral character, as any old-school guardsman would attest, then the English character may decline to an almost Mediterranean level. As of Jan. 1, corporal punishment is being banned in London's 620 state primary schools (the equivalent of public elementary schools in the U.S.), which have about 174,000 students aged five to 15. The ban does not apply to the city's secondary schools, private and church-supported schools, or to those outside London, but educators in these institutions will be watching closely to judge the effects of the experiment. Most teachers oppose abolition, some perhaps recalling the words of Samuel Johnson, who wrote in 1775: "There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other."

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