Irish Minister cancels permission to teachers
AFTERAFTER a storm of protest front and others, General Mulcahy, the Irish Minister of Education, has withdrawn his recent decision permitting the use of the leather strap as well as the light cane to punish children in school.
The Minister said that the strap has shown itself to be a source of misinterpretation and misrepresentation. A Ministry circular — mentioned in THE CATHOLIC HERALD last week—urges teachers to treat their pupils with kindness combined with firmness and to aim at governing them by their affections and reason rather than by harshness and severity. The teachers are told that they are expected to study each pupil's character and temperament and to ascertain the pupil's general circumstances with a view to deciding what is the appropriate remedial action to take in a patticular case
of default misconduct.
The punishment of children in Irish national schools has been the subject of a number of letters in