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Sunday, July 13, 2025

THANK GOD IT'S FRI­DAY

Sharing licks going and coming

by

20131206

I think I'm go­ing to start beat­ing my chil­dren again. I need the ex­er­cise. This time of year is so de­mand­ing. I ed­it two an­nu­al mag­a­zines that both come out in Jan­u­ary and, since I can't get to the gym so of­ten, I'll have to get in that bi­cep work­out some­how. Hey, my mus­cles are at­ro­phy­ing; my chil­dren are just go­ing to have to do their bit for my health.

Al­so, I have the le­gal right to beat them un­til they reach vot­ing age when, I sup­pose, my dis­ci­plin­ing will trans­mo­gri­fy in­to as­sault, and I'll have to ei­ther stop or make a jail. Bar­ba­dos was the first West In­di­an ter­ri­to­ry to at­tain "de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus" but it's like­ly to be the last one to stop whip­ping mi­nors.

Every time some news out­fit does a poll, the na­tion­al per­cent­age in favour of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools is al­ways in the high 80s to low 90s. In the 11-Plus class in pri­ma­ry schools, it's an ac­cept­ed method of in­struc­tion to beat chil­dren who don't score 100 per cent in their maths ex­er­cis­es, one stroke for every mark away from 100. These are chil­dren aged be­tween eight and 11.

One Ba­jan man told me he was grate­ful for the vast amount of 11-Plus maths licks he got when he was ten: his marks rose from un­der 70 to reg­u­lar per­fect scores. A score of 65 meant 35 strokes, one of 99, one: you do the arith­metic; and he did. By the time of his 11-Plus, he rarely scored be­low 95; and he passed for Comber­mere, the Ba­jan equiv­a­lent of QRC.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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