I Received Corporal Punishment At School

It was like that at my school

@JanDaw69: Were boys and girls punished diifferently for the same things?

@MartinII: Girls were pretty well behaved and I didn't know of any girl doing anything really bad unlike some of the boys. They did have different punishments but then they were not hung up on this idea of boys and girls being treated exactly alike

@JanDaw69: Thanks. Suppose a boy and girl were caught smoking together. Would they both be caned?

@MartinII: at 11 we got sent to single sex secondary schools, so I never got the chance to find out!

I think in that case it would be a private caning, on the hand for her and on the backside for him

@JanDaw69: I thought canings on the bottom weren't as bad as those on the hand. For a start, you didn't have to watch the cane descending. Also, the bottom was better padded and there was far less risk of any serious damage than when a cane struck fingers. Girls, in my view, were being more harshly treated than boys.

@jackcros: @JanDaw69: One might, I suppose, add that the female bottom is rather better designed for punishment than the male!

I was at a boys only school from age 8, and always imagined that the cane was more or less unknown in girls schools. Many stories, here and elsewhere, suggest that I was wrong.

@MartinII: I know that in schools like mine where it was boy and girls, the lads got the worst of it and more public as well.

@JanDaw69: boys were expected to "take it like a man" so a public whacking could be seen as a test of their virility.

@jackcros: Hard with girls there, my mum saw a much one than me

@JanDaw69: In my school boys and girls were treated alike. We were punished according to what we did, not for which sex we were. There didn't seem to be much difference in boys' and girls' behaviour either so we were just as likely to be caned as boys were.

@jackcros: Maybe others expected boys to "take it like a man". For many of us girls, it was important to show we were just as tough as the boys so we had to take it stoically too. I'm proud to say that, overall, we could. :)

@Lynda70: good for you we always admired a girl who could take a tanning (at home) well, made her "one of the boys" lol. Not sure today's women's liners would agree with our views on equality 😁

Damn autocorrect it substituted "liners" for "libbers"

Should have taken typing at school, but that was a "girl's subject" 🤔

@jackcros: I know what you mean by it making her "one of the boys" but it implies boys are superior. Perhaps it's better to say it proves the sexists are wrong and that boys and girls are equal. The only inequality is that imposed by misogynists.

The discussion of caning on the hands puts me in mind of a film from the late 1940s. Ann Todd plays a schoolgirl who is sent to her headmistress to be caned. The girl is a pianist who is due to play a recital the next day, and pleads with the head to cane her on the bottom, not the hands. The head will have none of it and gives her three stinging strokes on each hand. She has to cancel the recital and is so traumatised that she can never play the piano again ... until James Mason comes along to save her.

@Lynda70: I was of course referring to the attitudes and expressions of 50+ years ago when a girl being seen as " one of the boys " was a genuine compliment. I'm not sure that this was actively misogynistic so much as part of a pervasive culture of difference between the sexes. It wasn't necessarily all bad in that boys were taught to respect the opposite sex and protect them "women and children first", was this "courtesy" or "oppression".

@jackcros: It was this attitude which you describe that led me to believe that girls didn't usually get the cane. It's interesting to learn that that often wasn't true - though I think if girls were caned in school it was most often by women teachers.

@MartinII: a female cousin was caned several times in her all girls school. I wonder if single sex schools tended to use the cane/slipper to the same extent, whereas mixed schools felt more obliged by the prevailing ethos to limit their use on girls? Mixed schools also had to consider the perceived (by some) undesirability of male teachers punishing girls, although this did not seem to apply to female teachers punishing boys. If male teachers could not physically punish girls, their female colleagues may also have felt restricted in their ability to do so.

@jackcros: I was replying to your comment about not being sure today's women's libbers would agree with your views on equality. I agree that, at the time, being seen as "one of the boys" would have been a compliment. It probably still is intended as one if we ignore the implication. ;)

In the same way, what might appear as teaching boys to respect the opposite sex was a form of oppression. It indoctrinated boys with the idea that women were inferior. That's what made being seen as "one of the boys" a compliment.

@MartinII: @jackcros: From talking to women who attended single sex schools, it's clear that girls' schools used CP far more than mixed schools used it with girls.

It could be because girls' schools tended to be run by women whereas mixed schools tended to be run by men. Some might have believed that girls were too weak to withstand CP but I think it was more likely they didn't want to give girls the opportunity to prove they were just as tough as boys.

Another thing we should ask is that, as they must have developed methods other than CP to discipline girls, why didn't they use the same methods with boys?

@Lynda70: I'm glad you see being " one of the boys" as a potential compliment.
Fancy coming to the pub for a pint later? 😁

@Lynda70: interesting point about male teachers' attitudes toward girls.
With regard to disciplinary methods, boys had been known to respond well to corporal punishment for generations and, as it was simple, quick and required less effort on the part of teachers than alternatives, such as detention, there would have been great inertial resistance to change.