PEDIATRICS Vol. 93 No. 2 February 1994, pp. A62
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CANING PUNISHMENT VS SMOKING

J. F. L. MD

My idea was that we should start by studying the impact and relevance of the punishment awarded in a number of simple disciplinary situations. This interest probably reflected something of my Calvinistic background, as well as the extent to which corporal punishment had made an impression on me in my days at Uppingham. Since then I had often wondered about the value of such "correction," which so many extolled and yet so few had sought to validate. My first idea was to investigate the practice then common in schools of caning boys who were caught smoking. Was there any evidence that it had a deterrent effect? Our chance to look into this came only after protracted negotiations with a number of secondary schools in the Rhondda, when one headmaster eventually offered us the confidential access we needed to his punishment book. John Palmer's initial survey of the smoking habits of the boys in years 2, 3, and 4 of this school may have seemed on the face of it a fairly trivial beginning, but it was very much in the spirit of a pilot investigation and more to test the difficulties than break new ground. He merely conducted a short, confidential interview with each boy, asking just two main questions: "How much do you smoke now?" and "How much did you smoke a year ago?" Then he checked the punishment book to find which smokers had been caned. Although the study was far too simplistic to yield major conclusions it did show an interesting lack of any downward trend in the smoking of those who had been punished...