I used the cane and I now wonder if I was right to do so.

I was a teacher from the late 1960s until the late 1980s - a fairly short career as these things go although I was quite successful - spent my last few years as a Head Teacher.

Part of my job was to use corporal punishment. I believed then that I was doing this in the best interests of the children I taught and I'd like to continue to believe that. But I find myself in a world now where we're constantly being told this was bad for children and that worries me immensely. I just can't reconcile it with what I saw as a teacher. I saw it work. I saw it turn children around. I saw it help children. I really do think that's true. But I take psychological and pedagogical research seriously and I can't reconcile it with what I saw myself.

I am honestly horrified at the idea I might have harmed these children.

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TheSirfurryanimalWales · 61-69, M

Caning was still legal when i started teaching in the early eignties and two kids that were causing problems in one of my classes were caned.
Didn’t think anything of it at the time and the threat of the cane was enough to keep me from misbehaving.
And the vast majority of us thought a caning was preferable to a more long drawn out punishment.A a show of hands amongst the sixth form when debating this very subject showed just one of us had not experienced corporal punishment.And all the staff had.Some of them had been caned in school.
But times change....and wnen it boils down to it the cane is a bit of a barbaric instrument of punishment.Causes more than just pain.And now i’m totally against corporal punishment.But i don’t think any of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies had any complaints about it at the time.It was just normal
I don’t think too many teachers from that time or earlier are worried about what they did either.