I am sure most people would prefer to see boys in education behaving well and presented nicely. Which of these groups is most acceptable? Surely disci

Rhode57 · 56-60, M

Wow if we had been caught smoking we got 6 of the best on our bare ass .. We always had to be smart in uniform . We got caned if we werent smartly dressed . If we were in uniform in or out of school we always had to be smartly dressed . If we were seen by a teacher and we werent we knew about it the next day . When I went to boarding school , we had a 5 hour coach trip to get home and 5 hours back to school and had to be smartly dressed the whole time . There was always at least one teacher or prefect on the coach to make sure we behaved and didnt give the school a bad name .

Caned4doz · 61-69, M

The second picture is the preferred, for sure, albeit the shorts are rather short.

That said, I attended a private Catholic boys school and the summer uniform mandated shorts, long trousers permitted in winter.

johnstretton2 · 61-69, M

@Caned4doz How long should schoolboys wear short trousers? My quick answer is, the longer the better. There were until recently public schools that kept their pupils in shorts right through till 18. Among them was the school attended by our King. At the other end of the scale, Borstal institutions dressed their inmates in shorts until they were 21.

My teaching and tutoring was with boys in the prep school age bracket (8 to 13), and I certainly wouldn't dream of allowing boys of 13 and 14 long trousers. Perhaps it might be considered at 15, but longs should be regarded as a privilege to be earned and certainly not a right.

Occasionally I would take pupils older than 13, and I insisted they wore short trousers and knee socks too. I was not having them lording it over the younger boys. If they made a fuss about wearing shorts, they were given a stiff dose of the cane to teach them a lesson in obedience. Interestingly, several older boys admitted to me that they preferred wearing shorts anyway.

Finally, do not overlook one important advantage of bare thighs in the classroom. Boys can be called out to the front for minor misbehaviour and have the back of those things smacked hard, with hand or ruler, as punishment. Looking at the particularly short shorts worn by the South African boys, I would not be surprised if they were subject to such punishment in class.