I Got The Cane In School 6 Of The Best

@angelasharrat: I don't think naive is the right word, you're just judging by your own mores.

About the only thing single sex schoools really excel at is creating barriers between the sexes. Badly run co-educational schools try but are never as successful as single sex schools. In well run co-educational school, those barriers don't exist. Boys are just fellow students, just as we are to the boys.

This all became obvious to me when I started university. Fellow students from single sex schools had no idea how to interact with members of the opposite sex.

All my education and social life was in mixed sex environments. Women and men even worked alongside each other. Nobody ever told a big strong woman that she was too weak just because she was a woman.

Corporal punishment was common for boys and girls at home and school. Girls were not let off just for being girls, we were treated just the same as the boys - if we broke the rules we were punished just as boys who broke the rules were.

At home, most CP consisted of being slippered on our bare bottoms along with our fellow offenders of both sexes. We were used to that from an early age so it was all quite normal for us, even in our teens. Just having to lift our skirts and being caned or slippered through our knickers was something of a let-off compared to what we were used to at home.

@Sharon:
Thanks so much for that really interesting comment. Just a couple of responses. First, you are certainly right – if I had been conditioned to coeducation from 7, in an environment where it was customary for boys and girls to be slippered or caned in front of each other, then, when it happens to you, it’s been normalized and you just accept it


I wholly agree your observations about the unnaturalness of single-sex education. Literally, in my education, I had no social or educational contact with boys from leaving infants school at 7 and going to university at 18. Fortunately I had a brother, and through him at least had some social contact with boys. But I was horribly unprepared for the coeducational scramble at university, and adjusting to it was painful, as you correctly observed

If there is one upside, I do think single-sex schools for girls produce a better academic outcome – my school certainly had a disproportionately high percentage of girls going on to the premier universities – Oxbridge, London, Durham etc. But again, that may simply reflect the demographic from which the girls were drawn.

With hindsight, I am not sure that is a benefit at all, and believe me, based on the postings of yours I have read, if I had my time over again I would swap my education any day for yours and the social milieu you enjoyed!

And even though I still think I would have died of embarrassment having to bend over in front of boys to have my bottom punished, it would be worth it to avoid the stultifying female-only education I endured.

Just a last thought, at home we were always spanked on our bare bottoms usually in front of each other up to about 11 – a good example of normalization, as I don’t ever remember the bareness ever being an issue. But at around 11, it all changed – we were always then taken separately to parents bedroom and punished in private. I suppose that in itself has the effect of saying there is something wrong even to be punished with your own brother.

Thanks for you nice reply – don’t feel you have to reply to this. Just me wittering!

@angelasharrett: I agree entirely with the comments concerning the unnaturalness of single sex schools as I had little contact with girls until I reached the 6th form and even then it was quite limited. Living in a mixed hall of residence when I started at university was a cultural shock, however, I must have adapted quite quickly as I was engaged by the end of my second term.

@angela2106 I can see no reason to believe that being caned on the bottom in front of the opposite sex would be more embarrassing for girls than for boys. It would be expected that a girl would be reduced to cries of pain and streams of tears by the cane. Boys, on the other hand, would have an image of manliness to uphold and it would be extremely embarrassing for them to have the same involuntary response to the cane as the girls. It would be obvious to all that boys aren't as hard and fearless as they feel the need to make out, and it would be impossible to disguise it. Anyone who happened to see them afterwards would know, or would soon hear about it.

@SeekingConnection We girls had a strong incentive to take our slipperings and canings stoically too. We needed to prove we were just as tough as the boys to earn their respect and be treated equally.

@Sharon Given that the purpose of slipperings and canings is that they should cause the recipient's bottom sting so much that they squirm and are reduced to unstoppable tears, I think it's only natural that both boys and girls would try their hardest to be stoic about it. To lose control would be to invite worse embarrassment and shame. But, with the cane especially, I guess it would be impossible in most cases to remain entirely silent and stoic.

@SeekingConnection It's very difficult with the cane but not impossible. Some of us got a lot of practice,