Dear Editor,

I recently read a letter protesting flogging in school. I'm teaching in the US where as you know flogging is not allowed. Like that writer I've also gone to school in Guyana where flogging was the main means of punishment. Comparing the children of both systems I'd take our 'flogging' environment any day. I've been at the receiving end of flogging while attending school in Guyana and though unpleasant, it provided boundaries which we as children knew we couldn't cross without paying the consequences. This is missing here and the result is a school system of utter chaos. Other forms of discipline like the infamous 'time out' and counselling are a joke.

I'm particularly peeved by that letter because I'm a regular traveler back home and to the Caribbean and I've noticed we're adapting everything they try out here without weighing whether or not the results are desirable. Discipline in schools is deteriorating as we adopt the approaches they have installed in the US. Most of our policy makers were educated out here and they take it straight home, ignoring the fact that our system of discipline at home has resulted in far more disciplined students than there are here.

So, if we want to abandon flogging in schools go right ahead and see what we sow in five years flat.

Yours faithfully,

Nathaniel Hinckson