Schools in many parts of the country, but particularly in the cities, are facing serious difficulties owing to truancy and classroom hooliganism. The violence in schools is threatening a major breakdown in secondary school education, according to reports. Even among adolescent girls the incidence of violence has risen tremendously in the last few years.
It is not difficult to trace the causes of this serious situation. Partly it is traceable to the refusal of parents to instill discipline into their children when they are young. Another cause is the increasing number of broken homes resulting in lack of parental supervision at a critical stage in the life of the children of such homes. But perhaps most of all, it stems from the modern permissive outlook and the false theories about the inhibiting and dangerous nature of physical punishment or restraint of any kind — theories which have been widely and vigorously propagated and very largely adopted over the last decade and more. The sentimental reformers who were responsible for this new outlook, and who so deplored the infliction of corporal punishment, are now faced with the far more serious violence which the implementation of their own theories produced.
The return of discipline throughout every department of our national life is an urgent necessity. This, together with the restoration of adequate penalties for violence and murder, including the death penalty for the latter, would go a long way towards remedying the present situation.