Britons want the cane back in classrooms

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LONDON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Half of all Britons want to bring back corporal punishment to restore discipline in the classroom, a survey indicates.

The Times Educational Supplement's survey of 2,000 parents and 530 children found 49 percent of parents would like to see the return of spanking or caning, a practice that was banned 25 years ago, for unruly students, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday. Not surprisingly, only 19 percent of secondary school students agreed, the British newspaper said.

The survey also found more than three-quarters of parents say punishment should include after-school detention, expulsion and repetitive writing of sentences to deal with poor behavior, and 55 percent agreed teachers should raise their voices more to get children to behave. Parents overwhelmingly -- 85 percent -- say teachers of today don't get the respect from students they once enjoyed and 83 percent say discipline was stiffer back when they were in school.

British Education Secretary Michael Gove said he thinks more needs to be done to restore discipline in some schools.

"Even though there are many schools in which behaviour is great, there are far too many in which it is simply not up to scratch and, as a result, we have a problem with truancy, with disruption [and] with exclusion," he said at a conference on behavior in London Thursday.

No margin of error or survey date were provided for the survey.