CURRENT controversy over corporal punishment in schools reminds me of a scripture lesson at Stanley Road School when I was about seven or eight.

Our teacher had been telling us about shepherds and the love and kindness they lavished on their flocks.

In those days it was an everyday occurrence to see a flock of sheep driven through Worcester streets and those men with them seemed anything but kind, striking them with sticks and cursing them while dogs yapped at the heels of stragglers.

Moreover, I knew where they were going. Almost every butcher's shop had its own slaughterhouse.

I put up my hand and told the teacher that shepherds did not seem very kind to me, to a chorus of approval from classmates.

"But those men are drovers, not shepherds," explained the teacher, resuming her theme about kindly shepherds.

"But Miss, if the shepherds are so kind to their sheep, why do they let the drovers have them?" I queried.

The resultant two strokes of the cane taught me a lesson.

JOHN HINTON, Worcester