Spare The Rod
Relevance
Morrissey mentions this film in Autobiography as one he'd watch with his sister:
"My sister and my mother never sing, but my sister and I were united in the glorification of the social problem film – a fly-by television treat never to be missed, especially the school-as-cesspit honesty of Spare The Rod (1961), Term Of Trial (1962), Up The Down Staircase (1967) or To Sir, With Love (1967), wherein slum kids are shown to endure in sufferance the pointlessness of secondary education (for what use is anything at all that is secondary?). The Blackboard Jungle (1957) had been the first to free teachers – spouting resentment at the no-hope kids who were, by birth, three rungs below scum – and boundaries of frankness snapped. Jackie and I would watch as many films as we could, long before the days when television channels refused to transmit monochrome films for fear that no one would watch."
Wikipedia Information
Spare the rod may refer to:
Proverbs 13:24, commonly mistaken as the origin of the exact phrase 'spare the rod and spoil the child': "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." A line from the 17th century Samuel Butler poem Hudibras, whose wording is commonly mistaken to be that of the Bible verse: "Spare the rod and spoil the child" Spare the Rod (1954 film), a short Disney animated film Spare the Rod (1961 film), a British social drama directed by Leslie Norman and starring Max Bygraves