I Received Corporal Punishment At School

@davidstorm I never had the cane from the games teacher despite persistently refusing to participate. I had the slipper (plimsoll) every time.

@NankerPhelge I think PE teachers preferred using the plimsoll. Our gym mistress would slipper us for anything but, to the best of my knowledge, never used the cane. She even slippered us for things like smoking, which would definitely have meant a caning if she sent us to the head - not that a slippering off her was a soft option.

@NankerPhelge Our gym mistress lined us up and slippered us in the gym or bare bottom in the changing room.

@Sharon How did she get away with that if it wasn't allowed?

@NankerPhelge Schools were a law unto themselves. Some still think they are. In those days, nobody questioned what teachers did. That's what a lot of the historic abuse cases relate to.

@Sharon In that case, how did corporal punishment come to be abolished? One would think from that statement that it would still be in use.

@NankerPhelge the do-gooders partitioned parliament to abolish it and abolishes parental punishment at home at the same time and the law was gradually phased in over a period of a couple of years in the 70s I think it was, private schools were the last to stop ie Eton etc, they didn't want to let go of it. but were forced to, in the end, it never did me any harm it instilled values into my life as it did to most other kids of that time you only have to look at the louts in today's teen's to see that

@davidstorm I think you are right.

@NankerPhelge The law was changed when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that beating children without their parents' consent infringed the parents' human rights.

It was proposed that parents be given the power to forbid the school to beat their children. That proposal was rejected because headteachers didn't like the idea of parents having any say in how their children were treated. They argued that having some students exempt from CP was unworkable because they could be face with two children who had committed exactly the same offence but they could only cane one of them.

That argument was disingenuous at best as some schools exempted girls from CP, so they already chosen to implement a policy that gave the greatest probability of the very event they claimed would make the scheme unworkable. The only real change would have been who decided which of the two groups individual student were assigned to.

Incidentally, the sexist policy of only caning boys was unlawful under the Sex Discrimination Act of 1976 so that gives some idea of the type of people running our schools.

@Sharon I didn't know they only caned boys before 1976.

@NankerPhelge Some schools had that policy before and after 1976. It only became unlawful in 1976, not that schools concerned themselves with the law. Even today we can easily find examples of schools in breach of equalities and other "inconvenient" legislation.

@davidstorm Schools in the rest of Europe do much better by the simple expedient of treating their students with respect. UK schools could learn a lot from them if UK teachers weren't so pig-headed. (With apologies to members of the porcine persuasion.)

@Sharon But why? There was one girl in my class who should have been caned in 1974. I heard she did eventually get it in 1978 and the news of it made my day.

@NankerPhelge Teachers gave all sorts of spurious reasons, including simply "you can't cane girls". They never explained why they chose to beat boys when they obviously had a very effective alternative that they used to keep girls in order.

It's possible they discriminated with the deliberate intent of causing resentment. Note how such discrimination wasn't confined to CP. They also did things like addressing girls by first name but boys by plain surname. They imposed different rules on boys and girls - most of which had no legitimate or practical purpose. They must have known their practices would lead to increased misbehaviour thus giving them something to blame for poor educational standards.

@NankerPhelge Perhaps the school simply obeyed the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act. It wasn't unknown for schools to occasionally obey the law.

@Sharon What I don't get was why they wanted to discriminate against gender in the first place. It never made sense to me.

@Sharon Another thing. Calling people by their surname is frowned on and generally not accepted by society. If we were meant to call each other by our surnames, why do our parents bother to give us Christian names? I don't see the logic in that at all.

@NankerPhelge With few exceptions (e.g. Galileo, Napoleon, Rembrandt) we tend to refer to famous people by plain surname but I agree we don't usually address each other in that manner. I believe US teachers address their students as Mr/Miss <surname>. I don't see the necessity of that level of formality but at least it's equally respectful to both sexes. Prisoners are also referred to and addressed by plain surname, perhaps that's why teachers address boys like that.

As I'm not a christian, I don't have a christian name, I have a "first" or "given" name. Some societies still use mononyms, I believe Iceland is one such.

There's is little logic to many school practices. They make rules just because they can, not for any practical purpose. They often seem to be in competition to come up with the most stupid rule. One, fairly local, primary school banned children from wearing facemasks because they're not legally obligated to. Now the teachers want to be given priority for COVID vaccinations because they're at greater risks - due to their own stupid policy! Another school banned a student's "designer" face mask - It appeared to come from Aldi's Winter Collection as it had the word "Aldi" in small print at the bottom one side.

@Sharon I only said "Christian name" because it's correct. It has nothing really to do with religion.

@NankerPhelge I believe "christian name" refers to one given when a child is christened or baptized. I agree it's a common convention to refer to a first name as a christian name but I don't agree it's correct. Can you point to some authority confirming that view? It's also offensive to those who aren't christians, especially those who are members of another religion that has come under attack from christians. On the rare occasions nowadays that I'm asked my christian name, I simply reply that I don't have one.

@Sharon That was the origin of the term "Christian name", yes. But people who aren't necessarily religious still use the term simply out of convention because it was what they were told was correct in 1968.

@NankerPhelge The only people I know who use the term "christian name" are a few, old, churchgoers. In my experience, even moderate christians tend to say "first name". 1968 was over half a century ago, things have changed since then with society becoming more secular and diverse.