I Used to Get the Cane At School

The cane was awful!!

I hated the cane and being sent for it was a wholly frightful experience. It was made far because by having to take your "execution slip" as we called it, to the secretary first to make an appropriate time if you were unlucky enough for the Headmistress not be immediately available. The smirk on her face was more than just humiliating as she would call through and say "shirley xxxxxxxx is here with a teacher's note".

It did not mean one would necessarily be caned, that depended partly one's record and offence but mainly on her mood I am sure! I would go into her study praying she were in a reasonable mood because if not I knew I would be leaving her study with my bottom on fire and with marks that would last for some time. That resulted in another pet hate, going to PE or games with cane marks on my bottom and especially in the showers afterwards.

If I did get caned then I would have to take the note back to the secretary so that she could make an entry into the punishment book. I have never knew anybody that was caned on their hands but she would ask "were you caned on your bottom or hands", my face would grow as red as my bottom as I answered between sobs.

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Phoebe1990 · 31-35, F

Love the old time stories thanks.

NataliaT · F

@Phoebe1990 The amazing thing is, most of them are true. it's unbelievable that attitudes have changed so much in just 30 years (UK that is). Most women of my generation have their school horror story(ies) of getting the slipper or cane, which are inconceivable to the current generation

Phoebe1990 · 31-35, F

I totally believe you I talked at length with a woman named Dorothy (who is a memnber here) who got the cane over knickers in the classroom (all girls) and the cane bare in the headmistress office in the 1950s. The classroom ones were in front of everybody and she said somebody got it nearly every day. On one occasion every girl in the class was caned 3 days in a row until somebody confessed to whatever the beef was.

Phoebe1990 · 31-35, F

I might add they were high school age girls not little kids and it may have been early 1960s I don't recall exactly.

NataliaT · F

@Phoebe1990 Almost as an aside, I have also shared experiences with Dorothy, and as well as sharing many similar schoolgirl experiences, we also share other aspects of life which assure me that, like myself, she is wholly genuine. She is a few years older than me, but the way discipline and punishment was handed out in her school was replicated (almost stroke for stroke!!) in my school. The strictness, and the almost casual use of corporal punishment, is almost inconceivable in today's world, and yet that was our reality. Including once being in a whole class of girls who who each got the classic six of the best. Thankfully in my case, it was only a single caning, unlike Dorothy's, which extended to three days of consecutive canings. God alone knows how their poor bottoms must have felt after the third caning.

Phoebe1990 · 31-35, F

Yes I have known her several years great lady.

NataliaT · F

@Phoebe1990 Yes, for me it has been valuable reinforcement of my own memories.

TommyBoy · 31-35, M

@NataliaT Inconceivable indeed! It really is something wild to think about, how common and accepted such a system was.

NataliaT · F

@TommyBoy Yes: you make a good point. In fact, what really is even more inconceivable, is just how quickly what had been the normal way of disciplining children since time immemorial, not only ceased, but became excoriated as abusive, cruel and (laughably) as ineffective.

(I say laughably, as the one word anyone who has experienced a school caning would never use is "ineffective".)

In social history, pendulum swings from one extreme to another are common, with a happy medium only existing for a brief time, but it is difficult to envisage circumstances where this particular pendulum would ever swing back in favour of moderate and well supervised corporal punishment, despite its obvious effectiveness.

TommyBoy · 31-35, M

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

NataliaT · F

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.

TommyBoy · 31-35, M

@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.