I Was Caned At School

think girls at our school were never nude for punishments but boys were known to strip off for the cane on fridays after school

@skimpyboy That was definitely abusive then. If girls weren't stripped to be caned their was clearly no reason for stripping boys. The headmistress sounds like a paedophile.

@Sharon she was very strict but the nude caning after first year was done by our pe teacher , i was undressed by my mother when the lady head was caning me.

@chikki i took the cane several times on my bottom from the pe teacher and in first year from the lady head with my mother present

@chikki I respectfully disagree. Practices varied widely across the country and hand caning in state schools wasn't as common as you seem to think. My school caned us on our bottoms, as did most of the school my friends and acquaintance attended. Some caned boys on their bottoms and girls on their hands but even that practice wasn't all that widespread.

@chikki The idea that girls were too weak to take a caning was proven nonsense by schools and homes were girls were caned. Teachers must have being exceptionally stupid if they were unaware of those facts. At best it might explain why girls weren't caned but it doesn't explain why boys were. You seem to credit teachers with even less intelligence than I do.

Also, the double standards you mention are all connected to sexual activity so sexual gratification was a factor.

@Sharon I agree and said that i did not believe girls were weaker but society in the 1980's did think this was the case. Girls were not allowed to play football because it was too rough. I think it does explain why girls were not caned and boys were. The cane was thought as too drastic for girls but boys were tougher and needed firmer punishment and the cane provided this.
I cannot agee with you view that double punishment was for sexual pleasure. You are saying that parents actually liked to whack their sons bottom. I just cannot agree with that. They did it because in those days, unlike today, parents thought they had to back the school and that resulted in your bottom being whacked again. It was nothing to o with sexual gratification

@chikki I have to disagree. Female teachers in girls' schools knew girls could take a caning so it's strange that supposedly educated men ignored that evidence. Maybe it offended their silly macho view of themselves.

I didn't say double punishment was for sexual pleasure, I said the double standards were related to sexual activity. Things like it being OK for a girl to see a naked boy but not vice versa.

Was it effective? I suppose it was not.

@Codrin: No, it wasn't the first time most of us had been caned for smoking, nor the last.

@NortiusMaximus: 👍

@ernestcharles: I heard boarding schools were very free with the cane. I suppose it's because they were pretty much closed institutions where their victims (students) were unable to complain. It's not surprising a lot of historic abuse allegations involve boarding schools.

@NortiusMaximus: Some friends and I were caned in 6th form when we were seen smoking on the way to school. We were nearly 18 at the time so could legally buy cigarettes but it didn't make any difference, we girls still had to lift our skirts and bend over for six of the best across our knickers. The boys got it through their trousers.

@NortiusMaximus: My boarding school certainly was, but some day schools were as well. I don't think my school as been involved in abuse allegations. It closed down years ago.

i fell foul of the chewing gum rule a few times which was introduced after my first term at secondary school and once I was waiting outside the lady heads office with my mother and being next in my mother started to undress me in the corridor ready for the cane when the prefect on duty in the corridor noted I was chewing gum and I got the extra stroke together with another three strokes I was due for another breach of school rules

@skimpyboy: Why was your mother there?

I was in first year at secondary school at the time and the lady head did her fair share of caning first year boys besides girls of all ages , with boys a parent or guardian had to be present and with my mother attending i was fully undressed for my caning

@Sharon i have a feeling you were not a child when cp was used a lot. You have overlooked the point that cettainly in the Mid 60's we had not got many mixed schools....this was a later developement.

@chikki I was born mid-sixties, I didn't start school until c1970. CP was used a lot when I was growing up. We were also moving towards sex equality and more mixed-sex schools.

The Sex Discrimination Act was passed about the time I started secondary school and I remember it threw the cat among the pigeons. I've learned since that a lot of school were threatened with legal action over their discriminatory policies. Some schools opted to use CP equally, some abandoned it and others thought they were above the law so just ignored it.

@Sharon
I saw that a lot when I was teaching. In my experience schools that didn't use CP at all were no worse, discipline wise, than those that did use it for both sexes. By far the worst were those schools that only caned boys. Girls deliberately misbehaved very badly. As others have said, they flaunted their immunity, essentially taunting teachers, safe in the knowledge they wouldn't face any significant punishment. Getting boys caned was a huge joke to them, it was something of a competition among some of them.

It was common knowledge among teachers and some actually admitted that they got some perverted pleasure from beating boys. They also said that by not caning girls they could more easily avoid allegations of sexual impropriety.

@jackcros: I've heard of the strap being used in schools in the North of England too. Could that have been a Scottish influence?

@Lynda70: in my school the influence was Irish, there were a large percentage of children of Irish descent and many teachers who came across from Ireland. The strap was the Irish type, thick leather, reinforced with whalebone, and without the "tails" of the Scottish tawse.

@jackcros: That make sense. I'd overlooked the possible Irish influence.

It was but that's what UK schools were like then.