FORMER school principal Dale Butler spoke out in favour of reintroducing corporal punishment yesterday following the stabbing of a security officer at CedarBridge Academy by a youth.

And the Government backbench MP argued for a a national plan to be drawn up to address the needs of a younger generation which had become "alienated and very frustrated".

Mr. Butler spent 16 years as a principal, first at St. George's Secondary School and then at Northlands Primary School, where he was in charge until 1998.

Yesterday morning's stabbing left 31-year-old security officer Kariem Wales with wounds to the neck, chin and back, and police were yesterday holding a 17-year-old suspect in custody. Inspector John Dale, of Bermuda Police, said the youth had been pursued by two school maintenance workers who had caught up with him at Propsect Primary School playing field, where he was held until police arrived. The suspect is a former student of CedarBridge.

Mr. Butler said he was not especially surprised to hear of such an attack.

"In my 16 years as a school principal, I'm proud to say that I never once had a student attack a teacher - though I was attacked myself by students and also parents," he said.

"When you talk to the young guys sitting on the wall you see how alienated and very frustrated they feel. So I am not surprised that an attack like this took place.

"There is a growing level of frustration in the community, which is a community of great wealth in which opportunities are not being shared."

Mr. Butler, respected for his work as an educator, said he had started out in favour of corporal punishment, had then spent eight years trying other disciplinary methods, but then reverted back to a corporal punishment system.

"I tried using all the psychology and the nice talk, but I found that the only thing the children responded to was knowing that if they did wrong they would face severe punishment," he said.

"These days children seem to feel totally immune to punishment. Whatever they get, detention, suspension, they not bothered about it. My system used to be first a warning, then a slapping and then home. We held a stick over their head and they respected it."

Mr. Butler said that most youngsters he had caned in past years, when he saw them now, would cross the street to greet him.

"I was not a child beater, I was a setter of standards for children," said Mr. Butler. "And I would say about 99 percent of my former students appreciate that now," said Mr. Butler.

"I would sometimes beat them, but sometimes I gave them food and I even paid their parents' rent. Some of them will cross the road to say 'thank you for trying to keep me out of all that ignorance and negativity'."

Mr. Butler called for a joint select parliamentary committee to be set up to draft a national plan to provide moves to combat youngsters' feelings of alienation.

"My heart goes out to the teachers and the principals now, who are having problems with children on a regular basis," he said.

"But we have to start addressing these problems now or we will have another 900 graduates who are not equipped for the Bermuda workplace, in terms of not only skills, but also attitudes."

Mr. Butler is involved with Youthnet, an organisation trying to provide youngsters with role models and he visits Victor Scott School on Friday mornings.

"The whole community needs to get involved with projects like this if we want to stop this frustration and that's why we need a national plan," he added.