Jonathan Miller on Beatings In Schools | The Dick Cavett Show

my first guest tonight is one of the busiest man in england yeah he was here last night discussing a trip that he made to new york to study pornography there he had other business there but uh he was actually going to give a lecture on that subject shortly and it's always a pleasure to have him around he's a great favorite on american campuses when he's in america his production of the merchant of venice uh starring sir lawrence olivier is currently touring in this country is a wonderful production i just got to see it last week and he has a book on marshall mcluhan in the bookstores and he's directed movies and he used to be in beyond the fringe and uh he's probably done something since he was here last night the climbed a mountain or written a book or something would you welcome please the remarkable dr jonathan miller [Applause] you've developed a distinctive walk i must say every it's a result of last night i think and the fun that we had towards the end um towards the end is the wrong way to put it uh we got into a discussion last night of um oh well best we can't get into it again tonight it might be difficult well i was talking we're talking about the english uh the humor revolving around the wc in england is quite but let's not get all into that again as you said that was the end of the show last night um are you a fully qualified doctor still i said dr jonathan and i don't know if that yes i i suppose i am really i always feel that somehow um that the qualification might be eroded successfully with each year but it's still with me um unless i do something outrageous in which case it could be taken away from you but i've never tried it out uh since i left medicine uh by doing anything in medicine but it does still stand and i think that's by statute i will i can go on practicing as a doctor even if i never touch a patient for 30 years i can lurch into some sort of therapeutic activity at the age of 80 and not be struck off as long as nothing disastrous happens um you don't see you'd have to take an exam every year no no no i don't it's nice your wife's a doctor yes she's a doctor an md yes as you call it md in england mean something rather more superior it means that you've actually taken some rather elaborate exam or done a thesis of some sort and uh it's a higher qualification but uh it's the equivalent of what we call an mb here which is simply the bachelor of medicine which you get at the end of your six years of training and i have that and we'll have it forever and um will you until anything disastrous happens so i think perhaps i shall practice and i'll start practicing when i'm eighty and does your wife make house calls sh yes i've never asked to guess that in my life just didn't sound random but you see this is one of the features of english medicine uh which i think english doctors are often rather surprised about when they go to america uh i think english doctors expect to make house calls they're regarded as part of uh reasonable practice in medicine and i think they're rather outraged at the thought that patients have to be bundled into the boots of cars and brought to the office or the consulting room of the doctor uh in america um it certainly surprises me i can't quite understand how it would be possible to practice office medicine anywhere without house calls playing an essential part in the day i guess since the invention of aspirin it's much easier they just prescribe aspirin aspirin or cyanide do you have to is malpractice suit a big um problem here i know it's a very ugly subject in america um well no it's not a major issue here and i think the one very important reason for it because there is not a strictly commercial relationship between the doctor and his patient the patient doesn't view the doctor with the acute often subliminal but nevertheless acute resentment that he does in america because americans can see a large number of doctors very very wealthy on what after all is simply peddling on misery and i think this produces the state of mind which leads to a lot of litigation i think that you would get litigation in this country mounting if you return to a fee system yeah the idea of getting gypped is stronger it produces a sense of hostility uh and i think that one of the great uh features of the of socialized medicine is the fact that that sort of commercial relationship is abolished um and it's it's what the sociologists have called recently a gift relationship in which uh the patient feels that he has a right to draw upon some uh large collective resource to which he's contributed not on a fee basis for the actual service which he gets but simply to some reservoir which he has rights as a citizen to draw upon much the same way as the blood transfusion system works here in this country as well the idea of paying for blood for example in this country is inconceivable um and i think most englishmen would be outraged at the thought of paying fees for blood or or selling it dude or selling it i think that uh people would think it was a monstrosity to do that um and there's a recently another marvelous book by an english sociologist uh on the whole question of blood transfusion called the gift relationship and which he's used the uh the example of blood transfusion as a model for examining this sort of system where in fact you you sever the commercial tie between one person and the person who supplies a service to him by suddenly doing that you have suddenly a much more productive relationship between the person who supplies the service and the client it doesn't become a hideous competitive uh issue in which the client is looking always specifically for the value of the service in relationship to his fee um it would be very unproductive if medicine were to be established again on that basis in this country i think how can a person who once practiced medicine stand to leave it uh i've thought that oh medicine goes into your blood it does um i find it very hard i think probably the reason why i'm so keen to hang on to my qualification and feel that i am still a doctor is because it is so deeply embedded in me i feel terrible attacks of remorse at the thought of having left medicine and i always think every year that i'm going to go back and practice it again i've gone back to it to some extent in that i now lecture in the history of medicine and i've i've gone back to an academic side of of medicine although i don't deal with patients but i miss dealing with patients and i miss the work in a hospital and i i miss diagnosis and the whole business of medicine very much indeed what kind of a kid were you as a as a student were you uh were you ever caned in school caning is in the papers here i should mention to the american audience lately um i got beaten once when i was about nine uh but i somehow avoided it at uh my public school which is equivalent of your prep schools or private schools um i don't know how i managed to avoid it perhaps by simply by a mixture of cowardice and prickishness uh but i never really got beaten i was i ran the risk of being beaten several times but somehow managed to avoid it um how do they beat you actually what part of the anatomy comes into play it varies according to the sadistic interests of the uh of the exponents of the art um it's almost always on the bottom uh usually it's done i think by people who simply do it uh because they think it's the best punishment but on the whole there are very large numbers of exponents of the art who do it for the pleasure that it gives them rather than the pain that it gives the subject or rather the pain that it gives the subject is part of the pleasure that it gives them um and you can see them becoming sexually very excited by what they do this is one of the as well the unpleasant things about being at a school where where beating takes place can you remember what precipitated your beating oh i can hardly remember it at all i think it was talking at table at lunch at some time when one was forbidden to do so um there was in almost all schools where beating takes place there are systems of conduct marks and when you reach a certain level quite suddenly you can see the shadow of the the lash beginning to appear um it was a five conduct mart system that we had at prep school uh and uh and then you were beaten and you had to beat off your conduct marks you see as you went above five the number of strokes that you had was proportional to the number of contact marks that you've got over the allowable uh level how hard do they hit you well it varied i mean sometimes they draw blood um this is uh this is a uh at eaton for example where they beat you bare they draw blood and there are schools when which which it happens very savagely and very sadistically and also schools in which as you saw in lindsay anderson's film if where boys are allowed to beat boys and a young boy who's who's whose sexual instincts are at that time very incoherent and vague and con and rather sort of ill-understood by himself can often get carried away and do terrible things um and i mean i think it's a horrible and vile practice and it ought not to be allowed in schools um but it does go on but mainly in public schools otherwise in the prep school in the private schools um it's always believed somehow that it forms character and indeed it does um and this is one of the things which i complain about and most people have the greatest [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] characters [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

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Keywords: Award-Winning Content, British Culture Insights, CNBC, Classic TV Shows, Dick Cavett, Enoch Powell, Forced Boxing, Hellman v. McCarthy, Historical Footage, Interview Format, London Humorist, Medical Doctor Guest, Medical Industry Insights, Musician Guest, Opera Enthusiast, School Experiences, School Violence Discussions, The Dick Cavett Show, Thought-Provoking Discussions, UK Immigration, Watergate

Id: 5__aicW5yeQ

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021