I Used to Get the Cane At School

@naughtyschoolboy She sounds like both a dragon and a spanko!

@Disciplinarian Quite probably! It was almost the worst thing of all of it, reporting to her... deeply embarrassing!

What a job, eh... caned boy accountant!

@Rebecca54 The cane was quite rare in my junior school, only a very few of us got it. In secondary school, very few of my contemporaries escaped it completely.

@Sharon I expect about 50% of my contemporaries were caned. It would have been less had not 10 girls been involved in an issue on a field trip in the 3rd form. They all had to visit the headmistress in turn and bend over the chair for 2 whacks - the first time for most of them. I was not involved and only found out when some of them were showing off their marks the next day

@Rebecca54 Yes, that was exactly my experience too. A much thinner, darker cane, shorter and without a crook handle at Junior school - and usually (disgracefully) across the hand. Secondary school much longer and thicker, with a crook handle, but still remarkable flexible. And always applied to the bottom.

@Crazychick Yes, she likes being spanked.

@NortiusMaximus Do you spank her for pleasure?

@Crazychick Yes, we spank each other.

@NataliaT Do you think that could be the happy medium?...moderate and well supervised corporal punishment? I imagine that definition is relative/subjective.

Of course you are right. And I did note that it was difficult to envisage. The challenge is that , as well as definitional problems, "moderate CP" involves an element of pragmatism and even compromise, whereas those opposed to it in any circumstances tend to be ideologues and zealots, where there can be no middle ground, no compromise.

@NataliaT I feel like that overall outlook is the norm for almost all controversial topics. No one wants to meet in the middle, even discuss a middle ground. Each extremes definition of the other makes both seem impossible.

@MartinII In those years, you tended to assume that what occurred in your small universe was universal, and that in all girls schools, getting the cane for serious misdemeanours was the norm. Clearly it clearly wasn't. Even within one Educational Authority there were huge differences. The late and unlamented ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) there were girls school that used the cane promiscuously, and others where CP had been abolished.

As Superjulie notes, it very much depended where you lived. I don't think it even reflected class or social environment. It was the luck of the draw. My area was tough working class, and we all got the cane. My current best friend came from a very posh part of the UK. Her school was also a vigorous user of the cane.

@CarolineP Thank you very much for that. I agree it varied from school to school, as well as between types of school and different areas. Also it seems that in some mixed schools boys and girls were treated equally, whereas in others boys were much more likely to be caned than girls were.

I’d love to talk more if you are interested. May I message you?

@MartinII I don't do on line chatting, but will happily correspond on a messaging basis.

@naughtyschoolboy Thank you for that tremendous account, funny and painful in equal measure. What a regime! I'd love to hear more about your beatings and the secretary and nurse. The only thing I don't understand is what rule you failed to obey that led to Nurse watching your subsequent caning on your pants and baring you in the room briefly. Did you fail to go to her for the bare bottom ointment ritual?

@Disciplinarian Yes... it was the failure to report to her that led to the consequence caning! She was quite affable however, and seemed to take a general shine to me in a comic kind of way... absent-mindedly patting my already caned bottom as if to say: "Off you go, then."

She was allowed to spank us for more minor indiscretions that didn't merit a caning... a job that she tackled with great gusto, but not severely. She'd also pat, pinch & squeeze, so she just relished cute little bottoms in front of her, I think.

She'd been raised in South Africa (like my aunt, coincidentally), and had been a prefect at school charged with the responsibility of punishing naughty students (boys & girls). Then she had worked as a nurse in the South African prison service, and had witnessed judicial delinquent thrashings.

So a few spankings in a boy's grammar school was quite tame stuff to her I should imagine!

One time in about the third form I developed a psychosomatic symptom where I felt feverish, and several times asked to go to the sick bay in order to be sent home. It must have been noted, because the next time she told me that I could only go home if I had a raised temperature... and if not, she had been told to spank me and then return me to class.

I was given a choice... have my temperature taken (under the tongue, I hasten to add), or just leave it and return to class. I opted for the temperature and... lo and behold... it was NOT above normal. Aaaaaaargh! Actually it was below normal!!

She grinned and said: "Well, I think we need to warm you up a bit."

And the next moment I was over her knee getting my bottom spanked... but kind of in fun! She mock complained: "I don't know... I seem to spend half my time rubbing cream into the freshly caned bottoms of naughty boys, and the other half spanking them."

She also purred in contentment at the sight of my bottom: "You boys are so lucky to have nice, neat little bottoms... not like us girls spreading out all over the place."

Apparently my teenage bottom was 'a work of art'!

Of course, she'd be arrested now for all that... but I have to say that generally speaking I didn't find the attention unwelcome.

But my main impulse to write something here was more to see if any prim, ample ladies wanted to correspond... or if any pretty girls wanted a (virtual) firm older hand!

@naughtyschoolboy Fascinating, could all be out of an episode of Whacko or a spank-heavy cartoon in The Beano, especially Nurse. The South African connection is fascinating. I have direct experience there and how it continued well beyond official abolition....

@OnlyRhonda I suspect there were special secretarial courses for desiccated spinsters destined to become school secretaries. A precondition for entry was proven dislike and envy of schoolgirls in their youthful prime, all excited about the joys of the life in front of them. The total antithesis of their drab, weary lives. So nothing pleased them more than to come and call you out of class, and escort you to the Principal's study for what you knew was going to end in a humiliating and painful punishment. Or to interrogate - as in the case - the sobbing girl after her thrashing. In Germany, in those days, such women did have the alternative of becoming guards at a concentration camp. In UK, school secretary had to suffice.

@CarolineP I missed the entire corporal punishment at school scenario, being too young, but our school secretary also took delight in baiting pupils waiting to see the head. As you say, there must have been a special course for them,

@harveyrider In an ideal world, this would be the ideal arrangement. The problem is there was too much evidence your common sense approach was not abided by.

@MaryWat Sadly, part of the human condition on average is taking things too far.

@MartinII An announcement to add to the humiliation and the pain. We had a noticeboard that foretold when someone was going to be beaten that day. Again, humiliation heaped on pain & shame.

And every one would want to know the details afterwards and how well you took it, did you blub, did he use the dreaded thick, black, pliant dragon cane etc

Different times indeed. UK schools were based on serious, ritualistic correction in my era.

@Sharon Straight and to the point. Still sounds intense.

@badminton And it often is.

@badminton Too true

@badminton The clearest proof of that are those schools and teachers who only used CP on boys. Obviously they had some method of dealing with disobedient girls. They had so much confidence in those methods that they even felt able to tell girls "don't worry, it doesn't matter how badly behaved you be, you wll never receive CP." The fact that they didn't use those same methods with boys, chosing to beat them instead, is proof that they had some ulterior, almost certainly sexual, motive.

@Tripdelta4 Luckily not for me.

@Tripdelta4 I didn't and nor did any of my friends as far as I know.

@Tripdelta4 Certainly not in my experience. In the UK, there was often a remarkable separation between school and parents. School dealt with discipline issues at school, and parents with discipline issues at home and "ne'er the twain shall meet". Other than term reports there was little or no contact between school and parents. Most schools didn't have parent-teacher evenings, and my school almost specifically discouraged parents from contacting the headmistress. Apart from after-school detentions parents need never found out that their little darlings had been punished at school.

@MaryWat "That being the case, the probable benefits of caning are simply outweighed by the risks of abuse." I think that is where I am with it

@MaryWat I very much agree with what you say. It is of course the case that the widespread approval or acceptance of corporal punishment in our schooldays was based on some combination of emotion, instinct, what people were used to, rather than any considered analysis. One indicator of this is that although most schools seem to have used the cane to some degree, or at least kept one in the head’s cupboard, the extent and severity of use apparently varied hugely from region to region, school to school, even sometimes within schools.

It’s remarkable how dramatically orthodox opinion has changed on this and many other subjects in what is, historically speaking, quite a short space of time. I suspect people’s real, private opinions haven’t changed quite so much.

@MartinII Good post, and I think your last paragraph is especially insightful. The change from a school environment where corporal punishment was almost a given, to an environment where it was not just abandoned but wholly excoriated, was truly dramatic. Metaphorically at least, I have to pinch myself to ensure I am recounting real punishments which really did happen to me in schools as part of the natural order of things just half a century ago.

And of course you are right: whenever "public opinion" is polled, a majority still see some worth in school CP, at least as the ultimate deterrent. Admittedly a 'gut' reaction, but at least indicative that the elites are way out of line with mass opinion. As usual.

@Disciplinarian You did say wink, didn't you ?

@miscreant6x6 Oh, if only one letter had changed....

@Disciplinarian hehe. I need caning for such wicked thoughts.