Learning the hard way: The stick and the leather

BY JOHN FITZGERALD

Continuing the story of corporal punishment in a County Kilkenny school: previous articles and all subsequent ones can be read on the Kilkenny Observer website...

Recalling his school days in Callan Sean Holden had a vivid recollection of one teac her who struck moratl dread into every pupil.

“T’was while he was denying himself the fags that he took to using a hurley to slap us. He’d mainly use it, in fairness to him, to bang on our desks, or his own desk, to drive home some point he was making. He might go a bit lighter when slapping you with the hurley, allowing for its larger size, but it still nearly took the hand o you. I preferred to be hit with the narrow end than with the wide end designed to hit the ball.

“One day, when he slapped a pupil with the hurley, another fellow at the back of the class whispered out loud: ‘Up Callan!’ Some of the lads laughed and yer man got very annoyed, demanding to know who said it. e culprit owned up, and the teacher beat him around the room with his hurley.

“We wished to God that lent would end so that the man could smoke again and get back to normal. By normal I mean just the usual slaps but none of the really rough stu . Sure you’d have been better o in a boxing ring than the classroom some days.

“But to be fair to him, this teacher was a great career guidance man. When lads were leaving primary school, if they weren’t going on to secondary, he’d move Heaven and earth to get jobs for them.

I felt sorry for the poor man in later years. He had a lonely life, and nothing but his teaching and his vocation to keep him going. I met him at a past pupils party years later and the rst thing I did was o er him a cigarette. He was still smoking like a trooper”

Philip O’Kee e of Bridge Street recalled a “strongboned” Callan CBS teacher of the 1930s and 40s who worked part time on a farm, giving him powerful knuckles that he used to devastating e ect in the classroom.

“He was a great man with his sts”, Philip assured me, “and many a lad felt the force of his punches. He was a rea- sonably good teacher, he got the results he wanted, but you never knew when he’d leave the marks of his knuckles on you. It was common for pupils to leave school at the end of the day with bleeding hands or split lips.”

One teacher’s favourite punishment was to grab a pupil and shake him like a rag doll, joking as he did: “Shake well before use!”

Philip saw fellows being suspended by their hair by teachers who expected the entire class to laugh at the spectacle.

Another teacher memorably hung a boy from an iron hanger on the classroom wall close to a large cruci x, where the pupil was left hanging by his braces for a quarter of an hour. Before taking him down, the teacher turned to the class and jibed: “well now lads, was he the good thief or the bad thief, what do ye think?”

Nervous laughter greeted his witticism.

Philip emphasised that despite this rough treatment, many boys who attended the Callan CBS went on to respect their former teachers and held no grudge against them in later life. Other ex-pupils take a di erent view...

Callan CBC pupils 1958

Top: T. Maher, John Joe Carroll, Eddie Comerford, Br. omas, Sean Kennedy, K. Driscoll, Pat Forde.

Middle: Mickie Cunningham, Seamus Moore, Paddy Rochford, Michael Power, John Shea, John Gardiner, JJ Egan, Felix Somers, Tony Gavin.

Front: Oliver Murphy, T. Ryan, Paddy Denny, Ronnie Walsh, Mickey Kenny, M. Ryan, Martin Keating, M. Mackey.

To be continued...

Former US President Donal Trump is now twice impeached and thrice indicted but his support base is holding rm, according to all polls. He remains the dominant gure among Republican voters who share his view that he is being unfairly targeted by a justice system bent on helping Democrat Joe Biden.

A mere hint of criminality or scandal used to be career ending for politician. President Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate; Vice-President Spiro Agnew quit after being charged with bribery, tax evasion and conspiracy; Gary Hart’s presidential campaign collapsed due to allegations of an extramarital a air; Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress after a series of sexting scandals.

But Trump has made the state and federal charges –now a combined 78 across three jurisdictions – against him a central plank of his campaign platform, casting himself as a martyr. At his rallies he portrays the cases as not just an attack on him but his supporters. He told a crowd last week in Erie, Pennsylvania: “ ey’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you.”

A few dissenting voices apart, Republicans have echoed and ampli ed these talking points with characteristic fervour. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she “will still vote for Trump even if he’s in jail”.

Far from destroying his prospects, many observers believe, the latest and arguably most serious indictment for his alleged role in undermining American democracy will likely fuel a march toward the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Every time he’s indicted or under the spotlight, his num-