I Got The Cane Or Slipper In The Sixth Form

I was caned twice during my sixth form years in the early 1960s, once for skipping school and smoking and once for an offence which embarrassed the Headmistress – an agonising six of the best on both occasions. At my school the girl’s age seemed irrelevant when she was to be disciplined. It was entirely the nature and seriousness of your offence that determined your punishment. It mattered not whether you were a trembling 11 year old or a hardened sixth former - a caning offence was a caning offence. The only thing that changed was that the canings became more severe as you got older. The other change of course was that as you matured and became more worldly-wise, you were much more careful to stick to the rules (a plus in favour of corporal punishment) but equally rather more careful to avoid being caught when you did misbehave. So from memory, there was a significant decline in the frequency of canings as we progressed, and by sixth form, it was becoming much more of an ‘event’ when one of us was caned.

Few, if any, of the girls would have avoided the cane in their seven years at the school, but I think only a minority of us sixth-formers got the cane.

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StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

Just goes to show the cane does act as a deterrent and you learn to avoid the behaviour that warrants its use.

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK It might have worked in a few cases but certainly not all nor, I suspect, even most. In many case, the risk of getting the cane was was what made misbehaviour more enticing.

StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon Your mean girls actively sought out getting the cane? Even though they knew it would hurt and be embarrassing for them?

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK No, I mean the risk of being caught was part of the thrill of misbehaving. Why do you think getting the cane would be embarrassing for girls?

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StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon Because their skirt would be lifted and possibly their knickers taken down revealing more than a young lady might wish to show,

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK We had to lift our skirts for the slipper but our knickers stayed up at school. Friends of both sexes were slippered together on their bare bottoms by each others parents at home.

StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon Yes, more rules at school of course as to how punishments were carried out. Parents could do as they wished.

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK Schools didn't always obey the rules though.

StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon Didn't they? That is interesting, did you go to a private school?

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK No, a state school. The most common examples of schools not obeying the rules (the law) are blatant sexism and racism. Sexism was so ingrained the teachers even (unlawfully) had single sex trade unions.

StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon Is that right? I didn't think they would be allowed to get away with that. Where did you go to school?

Sharon · F

@StrictOldManUK They weren't allowed to get away with it. That's why the (men only) National Association of Schoolmasters were forced to amalgamate with the (women only) Union of Women Teachers. Even relatively recently schools have been threatened with legal action or actually taken to court over sexist and racist policies. I went to school in England.

StrictOldManUK · 70-79, M

@Sharon I am in England too, I hadn't realised that. Schools of all places should be equal-opportunity no matter sex or race.

HowardP · 80-89, M

@Sharon Sharon - this is totally off-topic - but your comment on the NAS and NUT impressed me and took me back to my teens in the late 1950s. My father held some sort of ex officio role the NAS (National Association of Schoolmasters) and my mother, also a teacher, was in the NUT (National Association of Teachers) I still recall the day the NAS called a strike to protest about the Burhnam Committee's proposal for equal pay - the abhorrent idea that female teachers should be paid the same as male teachers! Unbelievable but true.

In his innocence, my father, then the headmaster of a boys' secondary school, thought that the strike rule allowed him to enter the school, but not do any teaching. Big Mistake! Despite my father's full support for UNequal pay, his wholly male staff viewed him as a strike-breaking scab thereafter.

Bizarre really, as equal pay would have increased our household income through my mother's increased salary!

(On topic - dad was a great believer in the cane - both at school and home!)

Sharon · F

@HowardP

Bizarre really, as equal pay would have increased our household income through my mother's increased salary!

I think that's indicative of just how deeply sexism was ingrained in the school system.

A woman I chat to has told me that, despite having a doctorate and not adopting her husband's surname, less able teachers at her children's school habitually referred to and addressed her as Mrs [husband's surname]. Her husband also has a doctorate but some teachers even referred to and addressed him as Mr. Science teachers, however, used their correct names and titles.

In some schools, only boys were caned. Obviously they had some other means of keeping girls in order. Methods they were so sure would be effective that they even felt able to tell girls "Don't worry, no matter how badly behaved you be, you won't be caned." They could have used those same methods with boys as they had so much confidence in them. The fact that they chose to beat boys instead is strong evidence that they were just perverts.