BY JOHN FITZGERALD
(Part two)
Last week I recounted how Jimmy Hennessy, in that classroom in the Callan CBS back in the 1920s, was relieved that he’d worked out the right solution to a maths question, one that every other pupil in class had got wrong.
After leathering all the other lads, the teacher, known as the Bulldog, came to Jimmy, but when he saw that Jimmy had solved the “little conundrum”, as the teacher called it, the Bulldog gave him a severe beating after accusing him of thinking he was better than everyone else in class.
It was one of the countless savage beatings administered in the school, but Jimmy felt especially aggrieved because he was punished without just cause.
Resuming his seat behind the desk, he was stunned. He ached all over from the beating. It seemed you just couldn’t win with The Bulldog. Or for that matter with any of the other teachers who were a bit too fond of using the canes and leather straps, even against pupils who were slow learners but making an effort to improve.
Word of this incident spread quickly through the school, and a fellow pupil, Bob Lamphier, urged Jimmy to take a few boxing lessons.
Bob introduced him to an older pupil in the school, Jimmy Gethings, who was involved in Callan’s amateur boxing club. Every day after school for the next fortnight, he practiced the noble art. Jimmy Gethings- though not much older than himself- thought him everything he knew.
At school, Jimmy Hennessy accepted the usual quota of leathering in silence while he honed his boxing skills. But the inevitable happened one day when another cruel teacher, The Bear, in a savage mood due to a CBS team losing a hurling match, decided to punish every pupil for the school’s bad luck on the Green.
The Bear taught Irish and was every bit as rough as The Bulldog. One practice that really upset the pupils was his habit of standing on their feet when he called them up to account for some misdemeanor- real or imagined. The idea was to ensure that a boy could not dodge the leather or bamboo stick or a swinging fist if the interview “got physical.” Jimmy and his fellow pupils had endured this humiliation in silence.
To avenge Callan’s hurling setback, The Bear stepped on the feet of the boys and whacked them, on the hands and across their faces. Jimmy gritted his teeth and resolved not to be beaten this time. His turn came. The Bear screamed: “Hennessy, up here!”
Jimmy’s stomach was in a knot as he approached his teacher. Fear and anger mingled to create a cocktail of emotions. The Bear planted a foot on one of Jimmy’s feet and raised the leather to strike him across the neck.
But Jimmy lashed out. He landed a punch on the big growler, hitting him in the solar plexus. The whole class shrunk in terror as The Bear shrieked and fell back against the blackboard, before sinking to the floor.
Jimmy stood motionless, looking down at him, not knowing what to do. Nothing like this had ever befallen the school, and the pupils were petrified. Loud noises echoed through the corridor outside the classroom. The door swung open. It was a teacher from another class. Jimmy closed his eyes, expecting the Mother of all Beatings.
Instead, a hand clapped him on the back and he heard a hearty voice ring in his ears: “Don’t bother about him, Jimmy; he’s had that coming for years.” To his utter astonishment, Jimmy got away with his act of defiance. He was even respected for it. The Bear never laid a hand on a pupil in Callan after his encounter with the “boxer.”
“The boy who hit back”, the other pupils called Jimmy. “How I ever found the strength to resist I don’t know. Maybe someone had to. And I’ll never forget that kind teacher from the other room, a man called Jack Rice, God be good to him.”
The Wheel Turns
When Jimmy taught in Borris Vocational School years later, he refused to administer corporal punishment. This was at a time when it was widely used. His own experience turned him against it for life.
He recalled one of his pupils whose behaviour brought home to him the destructive effects of beatings in the classroom. The boy had come to Borris from Graiguenamanagh, and Jimmy noticed that this newcomer put his hands over his head when he passed close to the boy’s desk.
He asked the pupil what he was afraid of, and had to listen to a tale of rough treatment in a previous school. The boy was a slow learner, and had been beaten almost every day by a teacher for his poor performance.
Jimmy, upon learning that the boy had a singing voice, encouraged him to join the school choir, and told him he was a far better student than he believed he was. Gradually, the boy’s fear gave way to cheeriness and he lost his mortal dread of the classroom.
Reflecting on this, and the rest of his long teaching career, Jimmy said to me: “In a way, I learned a lot from the big growlers in Callan.”
He retired from teaching in 1975. In 1982 Corporal Punishment was banned in schools, banished from the classroom in response to a national campaign.
But Jimmy had struck the first blow back in the twenties- the day he fought The Bear.
