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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ArishMell · 70-79, M

It seems very variable.

My own schools (Southern English local-authority and mixed) did use the slipper and cane, but very rarely, and I heard of only about half a dozen, if that canings in my 7 Grammar School years. Of them I don't think any boy had more than 4 strokes. I remember someone telling me he was one of a group shown the effects by a boy who'd been caned that morning!

The PE Teacher used the plimsoll (didn't they all?) but very rarely, and only one whack. The threat kept some sort of order!

I don't know if the girls were caned or slippered. I'd not heard of any such incidents.

Ironically in view of the main threads here, smoking became allowed for our Upper Sixth, in the boys' common-room whose main decoration was a large notice-board covered with beer-mats collected from all manner of places - many I think, on school trips!

One reason quoted for allowing smoking in the common-room, at lunch-time, was that the caretaker and cleaners were fed up with clearing dog-ends from the urinals. I don't think many girls smoked then, but it was much more common than now for older boys and men to smoke.

To anchor all this, I left school in 1970.

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And now, half a century on and not supporting re-introducing CP in schools, sometimes I need to feel that slipper, or be introduced to the cane.