(From this free flogging gallery)

From Reuters yesterday:

A 16-year-old south Sudanese girl was lashed 50 times after a judge ruled her knee-length skirt was indecent, her lawyer and family said in the latest case to push Sudan’s Islamic law into the spotlight.

The mother of teenager Silva Kashif told Reuters on Friday she was planning to sue the police who made the arrest and the judge who imposed the sentence, as her daughter was underage and a Christian…

Kashif, whose family comes from the south Sudanese town of Yambio, was arrested while walking to the market near her home in the Khartoum suburb of Kalatla last week, her mother Jenty Doro told Reuters.

“She is just a young girl but the policeman pulled her along in the market like she was a criminal. It was wrong,” said Doro. Doro said Khashif was taken to Kalatla court where she was convicted and punished by a female police officer in front of the judge.

“I only heard about it after she was lashed. Later we all sat and cried … People have different religions and that should be taken into account,” she said. Kashif’s lawyer Azhari al-Haj told Reuters he was preparing a case against the police and judge for arresting and sentencing an underage girl. He said according to the law, people under 18 should not be given lashes.

“She was wearing a normal skirt and blouse, worn by thousands of girls. They didn’t contact a guardian and punished her on the spot.” Al-Haj said he was hoping to win compensation and to clear Kashif’s record. “We are also against the law itself. We want the law to be changed.”

From the Courier Mail on 29 March 2009:

Teachers given cane go-ahead at Bundaberg Christian College

THE cane is still being wielded at some Queensland schools where parents sign legal waivers to give teachers the power to hit their children. The corporal punishment option is offered at some of the state’s fastest-growing independent schools as part of their strict behaviour management strategies. Religious beliefs are used to justify discipline at some schools.

With more than 55,000 suspensions handed out at state schools last financial year – a jump of more than 20 per cent in two years – Independent Schools Queensland has reported growing support for private schools catering for the “disengaged and at-risk” school sector.

Bundaberg Christian College principal Mark Bensley said corporal punishment had become a drawcard for some parents because of a “lack of boundaries” at other schools. “A growing number of parents come to our school and say the school got their attention because it uses the paddle,” Mr Bensley said. “If they choose to not sign it (the waiver), they are not refused enrolment. But a very significant majority of parents sign because they like that we understand the need for boundaries, fairness and consistency.”

Mr Bensley said the plastic paddle – shaped like a table-tennis bat – was a “last resort” when suspensions, detentions and warnings had failed. The school, which has 600 students in Prep to Year 12, gave the paddle 10 times last year and seven times in 2007, he said.

“I would never use the paddle unless we have spoken to both parents and have their blessing for it to be used,” Mr Bensley said. “It is always administered in a loving way. In fact, we pray with them afterwards.”

Corporal punishment was banned in state schools in 1995 by a decision of Cabinet but was not written into law. Parents, teachers or guardians are allowed to use “reasonable force” in disciplining children…

Colin Krueger, principal of Mueller College at Rothwell on Brisbane’s northern outskirts, said the school used the cane at the request of parents. Parents are asked to sign a consent form as part of enrolment which gives teachers the power to use “firm but fair” discipline “administered in a spirit of love according to Proverbs 13.24, 22:6 and 22:15″, which  promote the “rod of discipline” to “correct the foolishness raging in every child”.

Mr Krueger, principal of the school for 19 years, said using the cane on a child “depended on the circumstances”. “If kids are persistent and we have tried every other avenue, it will be administered if parents request it. We haven’t used it for a couple of years,” he said. “I’ve had many kids come back to me and say ‘Thank you for giving me the cane’.”

Caloundra Christian College also has a strict disciplinary policy. What the school calls “corporal correction” is followed by a time of “restoration and prayer”. ISQ acting executive director David Robertson said behaviour management policies were a matter for schools. “Discipline policies are developed by schools in consultation with their parent communities,” he said.

Several parents of students at Mueller College told The Sunday Mail they supported the school’s discipline policy. “The school does do a good job. Problems are quickly sorted out,” parent Julie Wilden said. “We had it (the cane) when we were kids at school and it never hurt us.”

From the TES Magazine on 20 November:

Ferris Lindsay believes in traditional education based on learning and discipline – ‘corporal discipline’, as he likes to describe it. The DCSF wants his school closed down, but with one in five teachers claiming to support a return to the cane could his ideas gain currency?

The law on what constitutes a school has already been changed to ensnare him, but after a brief hiatus Mr Lindsay is again advertising for pupils and aiming to relaunch his “school”. He is not going to give up easily. “I love teaching. It is my passion,” he says.

Today Mr Lindsay’s pupils are three of his own eight children: Joe, 15; Hannah, 13, and Dan, 10. Until half-term he was also teaching two other children, although both have since moved to other schools.

Discipline is the distinctive factor in Mr Lindsay’s approach. Although he is anxious not to be defined by it, his attitude to corporal punishment – or corporal discipline as he terms it – is the issue that put him outside the law and ultimately brought the educational establishment down on him.

Mr Lindsay believes that teachers should be able to smack children. He believes it should only be exercised as a last resort, and always with parental permission, but should be allowed nonetheless….

Before branching out on his own, Mr Lindsay taught at Cedar School, a 30- pupil independent primary in east London. Corporal punishment was an integral, though rarely used, part of the ethos at Cedar, and when the law changed to ban corporal punishment in independent schools in 1998, the school closed.

But when two of Cedar’s parents asked him if he could continue teaching their children, he decided to set up on his own. The result was Tyndale Academy in Forest Gate, east London, named after the Protestant reformer who translated the Bible into English and was burned at the stake as a heretic.

To circumvent the ban on corporal punishment, he restricted the hours he taught. According to Ofsted, an establishment where pupils were taught for 18 hours or fewer a week does not meet the criteria for full-time education that define a school and therefore was not subject to the ban…

Without recourse to corporal punishment, he believes teachers are deprived of an important disciplinary tool… Mr Lindsay claims that he has not used corporal punishment for 14 months. But he retains the right to employ it. Parents are asked to sign up to his disciplinary policy, and if they change their minds their children will be exempted, although they are requested to move to another school at a convenient break in the school year.

For Mr Lindsay, teachers administering corporal punishment are not acting in loco parentis, but with the specific delegated power of the parents. He does not smack children because he is a teacher, but because a child’s parents have given him express permission to do so.

“That is not a loophole; it is a principle. Teachers should never have that right, but parents should,” he says. He believes it should also be used sparingly. “If it (corporal punishment) is used as cake that is terrible; if it is used as medicine it is not. It is not in the diet, and if a teacher is using it all the time, that is wrong…”