Hugh Reilly: Better off without the belt and bruises

'Why did God make you?" barked my elderly spinster teacher, Miss McManus, her shrill voice disconcertingly causing her chin hair to flutter. Mea culpa, I hadn't bothered to learn my Catechism answers and I, a seven-year-old penitent, was about to pay an awful price.

"Hands up," she snarled, as she took the tawse from her sharply-opened drawer. I prayed for someone in the class to experience a Sydney Carton moment, to come forth and take my place. "This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you!" she lied. Only an excitable, pubescent, Max Mosley would have agreed with her.

My body switched to survival mode: not the usual "fight or flight", more "flee or pee". In this age of innocence, primary school children believed that blowing on one's hands before being belted diminished the intensity of the smarting. However, after receiving two stinging wallops on the palms, it was clear that the Exhalation Theory of Pain Relief was somewhat lacking in scientific rigour. As I returned, sobbing, to my desk and grasped salvation in its cold metal legs, I found little comfort in the fact that God, apparently, loved me.

Last week, First Minister, Alex Salmond, spoke again of how a Miss Baird had thrashed him five times in his P1 class. Like many of the older generation, he seemed to recall his time as a whipping boy with a degree of nostalgia. "Bring back the belt - it never did me any harm," is an oft-repeated refrain whenever two or more pensioners gather to discuss school discipline.

As a schoolboy, on more than one occasion I had been on the receiving end of a severe thrashing, delivered with undisguised gusto by a sadistic teacher. One PE teacher, Mr Lindsey, even had a pet name for his Lochgelly cat o' three tails. "Shake hands with Mr Brown," he'd say before dishing out six of the best.

Ever the idealist, when I started my teaching career in 1979 I vowed never to use the strap. Serendipitously, as a student teacher I had taught at St Augustine's, a school serving one of Glasgow's most deprived areas. Seeing the writing on the wall, the insightful Principal teacher, Paul McBride, had banned the use of the belt in his Modern Studies department. And, contrary to the grumblings and Cassandra-like prophesies of the belt-happy brigade in the staffroom, the school did not descend into chaos and anarchy.

However, things went a tad awry for me on securing my first permanent teaching post at St Ninian's, Kirkintilloch. By dint of my no-belt policy, I quickly acquired a reputation among kids for being "saft"; some malcontents in my classes believed they were untouchable, if you will. It was six months or so before I finally cracked and lashed my first victim. The swish of the belt elicited an almost simultaneous squeal. Unfortunately, I was the one squealing. Teacher training had not properly equipped me to successfully hit a quivering kid without striking my own leg.Although outlawed in prisons and the British armed forces, flogging was perceived to be an essential learning tool until the early 1980s when, following a successful challenge in the European Court, it was prohibited. (Ironically, the two women who fought Strathclyde Regional Council through the courts eventually enrolled their kids in a private school where such punishment was still permitted!).

By the time the belt was banned in 1982, I had marked the hands of five miscreants and, to this day, I regret my actions. Immediately after a public scourging, one could cut the class atmosphere with a knife. Young learners sat terrified and shocked at what they had witnessed.

The belt did not work; if it did, it would not have been the same kids who queued up almost daily for a leathering. Today, I teach youngsters about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. A retired teacher lent me a tanned-tawse that I employ as a visual aid when discussing how society's view of reasonable chastisement of children has changed. Kids, who threaten their parents with a speed-dial call to Childline if they so much as raise their voices to them, are fascinated that their forefathers accepted such a harsh punishment for minor misdemeanours.

Low-level misbehaviour undoubtedly increased with the abolition of corporal punishment, but classrooms are better places for the demise of the belt.