Personal Response 3

Abusive Schoolmasters:

Even though this book was very interesting and it held my interest throughout the entire story, there is one particular part that I did not like and it makes me shake my head with disgust. It is the part where Frank McCourt described what being in school was like back in his time. McCourt described that all the school masters had "leather straps, canes, [and] blackthorn sticks" (80) that they used to hit boys that disobeyed rules, asked annoying questions, or did not know something. For instance: "They hit you if you don't know why God made the world, if you don't know the patron saint of Limerick, if you can't recite the Apostles' Creed, if you can't add[...][or] subtract" (80). Now I thought this was too extreme. I know that back in those days corporal punishment was common and people never questioned if it damaged kids psychologically. However, it sounds like to me that McCourt's schoolmasters will hit their students just for the sake of it. Perhaps they hit their students as a way to enforce discipline and structure in the only way they knew how, but I still find it very wrong. I would imagine that the boys would feel a lot of fear, dread, and anxiety of going to school when they receive that kind of treatment from their schoolmasters. And then the boys have to worry about not showing their tears when they are slapped or they would be called "a sissy" and be "mock[ed][...] on the street" (81). Also there was one school master that was so cruel that he could "always bring the tears and shame" (81) to any boy he punishes. No wonder McCourt could not wait until he was thirteen, so he could stop going to school and get a job instead.
A school is a place where you can learn to your full potential and be successful in life. A school is a place where you feel safe and that there are teachers who want to teach you and help you. It should not be a place where you are so scared that if you do the littlest thing wrong, you'll get hit or slapped "on the shoulders, the back, the legs, and, especially, the hands" (80). It is suppose to be a school, not a torture prison camp.