Corpun file 20979

Daily Mail, London, 22 November 1960, p.9

Caning? It's not cricket

Say the Russians at Rugby

By Daily Mail Reporter

THE two schoolmasters from Russia sat yesterday in the drawing-room at Rugby School, where the cane is still the instrument of correction it was in Tom Brown's Schooldays, and condemned corporal punishment as "an affront to human dignity".

Rugby's headmaster, Dr Walter Hamilton -- "I use the cane about once a term" -- listened intently, then said: "Their attitude is all bosh."

Mr A.A. Alekseenko, from Stalingrad, and Mr A.K. Bystrov, from Leningrad, were at Rugby to see if any principles of the British public school system could be applied in Russia, where boarding schools are being introduced.

They went on to blast two more pillars of public school education: fagging and the teaching of Latin and Greek.

Degraded?

In the bare birching room at Rugby described in Tom Brown's Schooldays (author Thomas Hughes, published 1857) there is still a leather-bound birch.

Said Mr A.: "Corporal punishment is degrading not only for the person receiving it but for the person administering it."

Dr Hamilton looked over his bi-focals. "Do my boys look degraded?" he asked.

Mr A.: "No".

"Just before I left Stalingrad one of my bigger boys beat one of my smaller boys. I ordered the bully to my study, then left him there. Two hours later he telephoned me.

"He said: 'Headmaster, I am still in your study. Am I to remain here?' The humiliation of being left standing in my study was sufficient punishment."

The boys of Rugby were stumbling through the Latin bucolics of Virgil at their initial-carved desks.

Chinese

"Latin and Greek?" said Mr A. "By eliminating these subjects except in special cases we have more time for studies which are of greater use in modern living -- the sciences, Hindi, and Chinese, for example".

Fagging? "It seems to us the bigger boys should wait on the smaller boys," said Mr A.

He and Mr B. ended their tour in "The Stodge" -- the school tuckshop. Said Mr B.: "We've been to Eton, too. Rugby is much better."