punishment for discipline?

p.20, Times of India, 17.9.11

GIVING POWER BACK TO TEACHERS?

Parents, teachers want caning back in British schools 

London: Parents and teachers overwhelmingly want to bring back the cane in schools in Britain complaining that the classrooms have turned unruly. The vast majority of them are also pinning for back-to-basics discipline measures including detention, expulsion and forcing badly behaved children to write lines.
    A survey of 2,000 parents countrywide and 530 children by the Times Educational Trust found strong support for the reintroduction of smacking and caning to discipline the most badly behaved pupils, the Daily Telegraph reported.
    Corporal punishment was banned in UK in 1986. Some independent schools, however, continue to meet out physical punishment, such as slaps to the hands or ordering press-ups until it was outlawed 10 years later.
    The startling disclosures have been thrown up by the survey amid claims by the education secretary Michael Gove that adult authority has been eroded in too many schools. “In far too many schools, discipline is not up to scratch. We have problems with truancy and disruption,” Gove said. PTI