I Got The Cane At School

Yesterday many schoolchildren in the UK went “on strike” in order to protest about lack of action against climate change. There were interesting mixed reactions. The Prime Minister criticised the children. Some other politicians congratulated them. Some schools enouraged them, and some teachers went too. Other schools said the children would be punished on Monday. Three children were arrested for obstructing the traffic.

In the unlikely event that this had happened in my schooldays in the 1960s, there would have been mass canings. Nowadays the favoured punishment is apparently “internal exclusion”, which sounds rather Orwellian. Not entirely clear why this is preferable to, or less cruel than, corporal punishment.