It’s likely that the title of the 1961 film Spare the Rod, directed by Leslie Norman, means nothing to present-day audiences. The entire saying is ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, a precept which originated in the bible and delivered the message that children need to be disciplined for their own sake, and that imposing discipline shows love.

The ‘rod’ is thought to refer to a shepherd’s staff, which is used to marshall and guide those in his care rather than wallop them with a cane. But in the film, as in real life, physical punishment is seen to be the default position of adults charged with the care of children. The film’s title comes from the 1954 book on which it is based (written by Michael Croft, the founder of the National Youth Theatre) and indicates that the issue of corporal punishment is at its heart.

Ex-military back in Civvy Street

And, oh boy, we learn more than we want to know about hitting, beating and caning through a number of harrowing scenes that linger in the mind long after. But the film has layers of interest that add flavour to and deepen understanding of its central polemic, and create a convincing and thought-provoking picture of England just after the war, on the cusp of the decade that swung, just before the drab greyness and primitive views exploded in a technicolour burst of enlightened thinking. Yeah, right.

The film follows John Saunders, a new teacher starting his first job at a secondary modern school in the East End of London. He is played by Max Bygraves, who was a well-established and successful family entertainer (there’s a nice meta-moment when the class recites his catchphrase I wanna tell you a story).

Bygraves inhabits the role easily and the film opens with the schoolkids swarming over the road, dodging and challenging the traffic, bursting into the building in a heaving mass, sweeping along hapless school staff as they make their way to morning assembly. Then we see the back view of Saunders with his raincoat and briefcase making his solitary way across the playground, and we think here he comes, the idealistic youngster who wants to make a difference, and we’re kind of right, but not altogether.

Saunders isn’t that young, and he hasn’t gone into teaching with idealistic motives. He was in the RAF during the war, and hasn’t settled into civilian life. He thought he’d give teaching a go (how hard can it be?) and enrolled in an emergency training course.

The film convincingly depicts men, former officers and soldiers, ill-at-ease in their profession and in themselves, hanging on to a military mode of discipline and communication, coughing and hacking their way through clouds of cigarette smoke, marking their time until retirement.

Donald Pleasence gives a fine performance as the headmaster Jenkins, trying to survive the challenges of poor resources and ill-disciplined pupils through maintaining an us-and-them approach, expressed through the might of corporal punishment.

His colleague Gregory, strongly portrayed by Geoffrey Keen, channels his angst into a sadistic relish for administering the cane. This type of teacher was quite a familiar presence in schools for some time after the war, ex-servicemen affected for life by their experiences, looking to familiar hierarchical structures for status and support and often baffled by its absence.

We don’t need no education

John Saunders is put in charge of Class 2, 14-year-olds who will leave school at the end of the year, and rises to the challenge of dealing with generally unruly behaviour – chucking furniture about, smoking, being cheeky, that sort of thing – by engaging with them and persisting in his efforts to teach them something.

The kids can’t see any point in education, and many of their teachers see no point in trying to educate them. As one of them puts it, what’s the point in trying to develop minds they don’t have? What can you expect when they come from homes impoverished in every way?

Saunders’ kindness is demonstrated when he buys trousers for a boy who needs them, and he shows empathy to troublemaker Fred Harkness when the boy tells him how tough it was at home when his father returned from the war, irrevocably damaged by his experience in a Japanese POW camp. Saunders develops a complex relationship with Harkness and his mother, supporting and encouraging the boy to apply for an apprenticeship.

Saunders gets on well with the girls in his class, including the one who fancies him. Your heart sinks when he bumps into her one evening and accepts her invitation to walk her home and meet her parents, who are out of course… But the situation doesn’t develop in the obvious way and his naivety isn’t punished, unless you count a black eye from the father who returns.

Swishful thinking

The sexual dangers inherent in teacher-pupil relationships which are often explored in films, books and plays are not the subject of this film. Its unforgettable dominating image is The Cane. A long, thin, swishy piece of wood wielded expertly by those who relish its potential. The most disturbing scene in Spare the Rod is when Saunders is given guidance as to its use:

• The arm must be horizontal.
• The hand must be stretched out with the fingers straight and the thumbs held back.
• Choose the less dominant hand. If both are used equally (shrug).
• Make sure you miss the body.
• Oh, and never hit a boy in the head area. You never know, mastoids, boils on the neck, that kind of thing.

The film ends on a vaguely optimistic note. Saunders survives a crisis that might have forced him to resign, and it’s strongly suggested that he will continue in teaching. If he hangs on until 1987 he’ll see the abolition of corporal punishment in schools like his; for private schools it was 1998 in England and Wales, 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in Northern Ireland.

On a lighter note, the film does illustrate a source of fairly trivial distress in schools that disappeared a long time ago. I’m referring to the problems caused by the practice of class teachers collecting and recording dinner money. There’s a very amusing cameo in Spare the Rod of a person employed to do the accounts and the dinner money.

A glimpse of the forms on which the amounts had to be entered will cause a shiver down the spines of all those able historians, linguists, geographers and so on who could add up the shillings and sixpences no problem, but were baffled by the rows and boxes and carry forwards and the rest. Maths teachers were in a strong position here, and were usually very willing to do it for you, for a price, of course, often involving chocolate.