The Rose in Bloom

Kirsten was somewhere between pleased and frightened. Why she had been invited to speak at the Sixteenth International Biennial Convocation on Discipline in Schools at Wrest Point Casino was beyond her understanding, but that she had been asked to speak on the subject “Christian Scriptural Understandings upon the Use of Physical Means of Sanction” had left her stunned. She allowed herself a brief scan of the platform: sitting two seats down from her was a Catholic Monsignor from Rome: surely he’d have been a better option on the topic, since whilst Kirsten was most certainly Christian, and of the Biblical mindset, she did not believe that flogging was the answer to very much at all. This, after all, was the twenty-first century; the age of Samuel Marsden, “The Flogging Parson”, had passed, even in Van Dieman’s Land. Sitting between her and his grace was Sir Stephen Aldwych, former Secretary of State for Education in HM (British) Government, and former head master of Kirsten’s own girlhood school. Indeed it was Sir Stephen who had served Kirsten with her only experience of corporal punishment whilst she had been a pupil. It seemed odd to her that both she and he had been invited to return to Hobart to speak at the convocation, perhaps there was to be some sort of specific Tasmanian flavour to proceedings, and the calling in of the Diaspora was but one facet of this.

Thank you your Excellency, Madam Premier, ladies and gentlemen. Our next speaker is a daughter of this very city, raised in Kingston and educated at…

Kirsten looked shyly across at Sir Stephen. He smiled back at her, took her hand and squeezed it encouragingly.

… College and then the University of Tasmania where she completed a Bachelors degree with first class Honours in Arts, and a Masters degree in Teaching. She is currently serving as Director of Behaviour Support Studies at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, and as senior adviser to the Hertfordshire Local Education Authority on behaviour management. She has published three books on the subject of both the alternatives to corporal punishment within social and educational settings in schools and care homes, and upon its uses therein. Her most recent book addresses this subject from a Christian Biblical understanding and it is to that end that we have invited her to address the gathering. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Miss Kirsten Ellison CBE, AC…

“Sick ‘em Kirstie!” winked Sir Stephen. Kirsten smiled, her nerves evaporating at the sound of the uncharacteristically ocker encouragement from her mentor. She stood to the applause and walked across to the microphone.

“Good morning your Excellency, Madam Premier, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your welcome: it is indeed a great privilege to be home, and to be speaking to you on a topic so close to my heart. I must admit to a bout of nerves at this point, speaking not only in the presence of both the Governor of Tasmania and the Premier, but also of Sir Stephen, my former head-master. When last we shared a desk in the same room I was bent across it…

Laugher

“…I trust the same shall not be required of me today.”

“The Christian faith composes, I believe, an incredibly diverse and deep-seated international community. Before accepting my post with Hertfordshire I was Behaviour Support Teacher at a local secondary school and teacher of Humanities where I wrote units of work integrating History and Geography with Religions Education. As such I was able to integrate the study of ethics and religion with my daily duties as classroom and key-stage teacher. It became apparent to me that the two are, and shall always be, intrinsically connected.”

Kirsten looked up: the sea of faces disappeared after two rows and that was fine with her as she had never enjoyed speaking in front of large crowds. The people she could see seemed relaxed and attentive, she’d not said anything contentious yet. Yet.

“And so it is that I speak to you from perhaps three fronts. As disciplinarian, for want of a better term; as moralist and ethicist, a teacher of Religion within the context of Humanities; and as holder of specific religious beliefs of my own. I speak with three tongues; be they the tongues of men and angels I pray they be also tongues of love. I speak with the three simultaneously.”

Kirsten heard the Monsignor chuckle at her quote from First Corinthians. She turned slightly but could not see him, was it an approving chuckle or a derisive one? Sick ‘em Kirstie she reminded herself.

“The instruction of scripture to punish children bodily is found most notably in the Proverbs, of the twenty-third chapter and the fourteenth verse. It is, however, the thirteenth verse that is of interest to me: do not withhold discipline from a child. I agree, and am the first to do so, that a knee-jerk reaction away from discipline…”

Kirsten paused to stress the importance of her word,

“…as a response to the flagrant and unmerited physical abuses of children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is not a valid response. Scripture states that if you punish him with a rod he shall not die, well we all know that in the past that has not always been the case. Should we, however, withhold all discipline?”

Kirsten looked up. Still nothing too threatening for the crowd, but again she could only see the first two rows, where the respectable people sat. Kirsten knew had she been a delegate to this session she’d have been further toward the back: it was the people sitting there she really hoped to impress.

“I stand before you as one born in nineteen seventy-two. Sadly I was not born here; I am an immigrant from the mainland…”

Kirsten paused meaningfully; she knew how Tasmanians hated reference to “the mainland” as such,

“…that of course being the North Island of New Zealand…”

Laughter

“…before settling in Kingborough at the age of five when my father began work as an engineer with the Hydro. I attended a local primary school, studied under our own dear Sir Stephen’s directing hand here in Hobart itself, and then continued on through Tasmania University until the late 1990s. I am one of those known collectively as Generation-X, but unlike most of my contemporaries I have in fact read Douglas Coupland’s book. I know who Kurt Cobain is, and Pearl Jam, but I also remember when popcorn used to be made on the stove and not in the microwave.”

Laughter.

Kirsten looked up, they were with her now.

“I am a child of the children of the sixties. My parents are Baby Boomers, my mother a ten-pound-Pom, although she’s actually from Northern Ireland. I was raised in a home where there was strong discipline, it was often physical, it was occasionally unmerited, sometimes it was even cruel, but it was the action of loving parents who were themselves quite young at the outset. I am an only child, my parents never had the opportunity to get it right before they had me, and they never had the opportunity to get it right afterwards: I was a solitary guinea pig reared on the banks of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel.”

Laughter.

Kirsten allowed herself a smile; they’d asked her back to Tasmania and it was Tasmania she would give them. This city was more, indeed, than just the end point of a Sydney yacht-race and an Old Bailey pick-pocket hearing. It was home, and she was bloody proud of it.

“And so, as a child of this even Greater Southland of the Holy Spirit…”

Laughter

“…than the big one to our near north; of a land referred to by a man no less infamous for his famous last words than a certain Ned Kelly himself, as that island of bondage and tyranny…”

Laughter.

Kirsten saw her former History professor in the crowd, and returned his nod,

“…and a child also of a Christian heritage I am delighted to be able to speak with you this morning.”

Applause.

“I am of the opinion that punishment need not occur where discipline is solid. Rather than sparing and spoiling from the Proverbs, let us look at the thirty-first chapter of Solomon’s great work, and of the twenty-eighth verse.”

Kirsten wondered where the Anglicanisation of her language was coming from, her church back home in London was anything-but, however she resigned herself to sounding religious. She thought it might be expected of her.

“The Wife of Noble Character: a passage very dear to my heart as a young, very single and stunningly attractive Christian woman…”

Laughter

“…incidentally I shall be passing out application forms and accepting CVs from eligible bachelors, or mothers of same, at the end of this session…”

Laughter and cheering from the back

“…seems to me a better place to consider the scriptural basis for raising children. This passage speaks of the woman of virtue who is rewarded by the blessing, honour and praise of her children. Blessing in this context is best translated as happy and to be envied; wouldn’t we all like that ladies? Scripture, far from countenancing the thrashing of minors, places physical punishment within the confines of a loving, God-honouring family where wife and husband serve side-by-side in their God-ordained places of service and leadership, both as servants, both as leaders, setting an example of appropriate forms of Christianity as to allow children to be raised up in a manner of godliness from which they shall not depart.”

“Listen my sons to your father’s instruction, pay attention and gain understanding… When I was a child in my mother’s house she taught me, saying ‘lay hold of my words with all your heart, and keep my commandments, and you will live’. This is the wisdom of Solomon at the commencement to his fourth chapter of said Proverbs. The Christian gospel is one of grace; not obedience to legal codes but of loving relationship with the one Christ made accessible as our dear, Abba Father.”

Kirsten heard the Monsignor call her good.

“When I was little, in a home of church-attending parents, I was spanked with open hand or hairbrush as necessary, and sometimes more than necessary. My father relinquished all of this to my mother’s capable hand when I began to menstruate, and she ceased when I reached the age at which I might legally leave school. I chose to stay at school, but was no longer required as a fifteen year old to bend over young lady. And may the Lord make me truly thankful.”

Laughter

“I was caned only the once at school, in my final year, and by mistake.”

Laughter

“Yes, it’s true. A mix up in names and I was sent to the triangle for the crimes of another pupil. For the most part I was kept good at school not by the threat of the cane, or by its application, but by the support of the teachers and the community of grace, not in forgetting misbehaviour but in encouraging the girl who fell into error of many sorts…”

Laughter

“…except of those sorts…”

More laughter

“…to stand up again and walk on in secure confidence of her place in both the school community and in the world beyond the walls of the college. I thank Sir Stephen, Mister Old Witch…”

Laughter

“…for establishing such a culture in his tenure as leader of our community of excellence, and for allowing me that priceless opportunity to feel the bite of discipline upon my own dear seat of learning in the name of research.”

Kirsten turned and extended her hand to Sir Stephen. He rose, bowed formally, and shook her hand. Kirsten executed a neat curtsey and turned back to the lectern: all to thunderous applause and laughter which Kirsten acknowledged with a casual wave. Sick ‘em Kirstie! she reminded herself.

“It is said of many men that they can be so longwinded upon their homecoming that they should be called ‘Gusts of Honour’…”

Laughter

“…and of others that when they say ‘lastly’ they last. Allow me then to say ‘in conclusion’ and conclude…”

Laughter

“… by going on to say…”

Laughter

“…that in my opinion as all of Christian, Behaviour Support Specialist, Humanities Teacher, and indeed woman of this time and age, but mainly as Christian, that the Biblical answer to the question ‘to beat or not to beat’ is found not in examining the repeated and rapid implementation of the rod; but rather in considering the benefice in the sustained and significant building of a culture of love and support within a committed community, at best the extended family, as was the manner in which our own dear Lord was himself raised to the place where at thirty years of age he could embark upon a mission, within a community of mates, to bring about the salvation of the age. By his stripes we are healed, by his church we are discipled, and in his steps we are raised to be the people we were created in the image of God to become: solid, secure, stable members of a generous society, where everyone uses inside voices and keeps his or her elbows off the table at meal-times.”

Laughter and applause.

“God bless you, each and all, in and with gracious abundance.”