IT has been predicted that classroom text books will soon be a thing of the past, relegated in the national memory to take their place alongside Tom Brown’s Schooldays and discipline enforced by the cane.

Younger readers, of course, will have gone through the education system without benefit of a good thrashing as corporal punishment was banned in 1987.

Mind you, Education Secretary Michael Gove is reported to be in favour of bringing it back after last year’s street riots.

I hear this suggestion has gained the enthusiastic backing of respected educationists such as Wackford Squeers of Dotheboys Hall. Mr Squeers, it is said, is not just in favour of corporal punishment he thinks capital punishment might be of even greater benefit for classroom discipline.

But let’s face it, beating up kids is in the past. The days when a teacher would fling a board duster at a disruptive lad in the back row are gone, no matter how satisfying the thwack as it hit him in the ear.

The strike rate at my school was phenomenal and we learned to duck and dive at an early age. We honed our skills in woodwork where the chap in charge preferred to hurl chisels.

Health and Safety, eat your hearts out.

Those days are gone along with teaching methods that taught the three Rs which, I have to admit, was a boast that was always suspect because the subjects they were supposed to represent were Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Three Rs? Sorry, that’s RWA.

Maybe that’s where the rot started.