Hi
A very close girlfriend of mine recently told me something which I think is outragious.
We were having a glass of wine and chatting about our school days...almost thirty years ago now, giving my age away...oh well!.
My friend and I were at different school but had lived in the same town. The incident, which my friend described to me and which so outraged me is that when she was in the fifth year, so
around fifteen years old, she had fallen in with a bad crowd, as you often do at that age, and had been pressured into smoking pot at the back of the school.
On one occasion my friend was caught by a teacher and taken to the headmaster. She was then given a choice between the police being called or accepting corporal punishment. She naturally being afraid of getting into real trouble with the Police, agreed instead to being smacked by the headmaster.

I don't really know what the law regarding corporal punishment was at the time, mid 70's. My school made a point of not using corporal punishment at all, but it seems
to me that a headmaster smacking the bottom of a fifteen-year-old girl seems a little odd?

What do there people think of it?

twisted

Twisted...yeah that's kinda what I thought! But it's hard to know how normal it was she seemed to think it was at the time, although she did say that if felt quite wrong at the time and that she was very upset about it afterwards.

Does anyone know what the policy was back then?

I was caned, slippered and everything at school. It's just the way it was back then. One of my schools was even rented out for a National Front meeting!!

The 70s was a crazy time to live in, though. Cardiff was a hotbed of football hooliganism back then and we all wanted to be a part of that, so school days were a mental time!!

We had the can, my brother gave the teacher a gold cane on leaving because he said he was the most caned boy in the school

I went to school in the 70's and the cane was still in use. I only remember one or two boys being caned and that was on their hands not bottoms! Think a man caning a 15 year old girl on her backside is pervy, he should have suspended her instead.

There have been more than one case of a male teacher caning girls and apparantly it was quite legal, but JuliaW refered to the incident as 'spanking.' If by that she meant that he smacked a girl on the bottom with his hand I would say that was illegal even in those days.

My headmaster used to spank with his hand, but that was at an independant all-boys school!

He smacked her over his knee with his hand, and with her skirt pulled up. The same thing used to happen at my primary school, the Headmaster smacked girls and boys like that, but at secondary school, and when she was fifteen years old...it just seems really wrong!

Headmasters got away with all sorts back then because pupils just didn't know their rights. He probably enjoyed smacking girls bottoms, and probably took every chance he got to do it.

quote:

Originally posted by Julia1:
Headmasters got away with all sorts back then because pupils just didn't know their rights. He probably enjoyed smacking girls bottoms, and probably took every chance he got to do it.

Was it a state school or an independent school. The latter were virtually a law unto themselves in those days!

I started comp in '79 (finishing in 84) and for the first 4 years, we had corporal punishment. I was caned on numerous occasions, basically it was on the backside with the Head taking, with hindsight a comedy, run up.

We also had an English teacher, who dished out corporal punishment to the lads, by punching them. Again, I was on the receiving end of this more than once. He wasn't discriminatory, in that he would punch head or body. Only redeeming feature for him was that he was a bloody good teacher. He was sacked in 1986 for, allegedly (as I'd obviously left) for not allowing a pupil an inhaler, during an asthma attack in his class.

Different times though. Having received coproral punishment, I never complained, nor did anyone else I know, as that would have let them know that they'd hurt you. You took the punishment & give them hell as soon as possible.

When I was 11 one of the boys in my class was picked up and thrown down on the floor by my teacher. That teacher was seen before that as a soft-touch, and it changed how we all behaved for good.

Some form of punishment is essential, but I don't think it needs to be physical. We've all had teachers that could control a class just by standing there. My primary school head teacher could put the fear of God into you with just a look.

I do think that teachers have a lack of power in the classroom though.

I was at secondary school late 60's early 70's .... although a mixed school on fridays it was seperate assemblies. Any boy who had misbehaved was publicly caned on a Friday in front of the other boys ................. us girls were always miffed to have missed out on a public caning!!!!!!!!!! How sadistic is that? As I remember we had one or two girls caned publicly (on a Friday) but strangely enough I don't remember all the detail;s (think I looked away).As for the teachers and their perversions.................. well my friend was accosted twice by a male teacher - once in the boys changing rooms (she was enticed - a long story) and once when it was pouring down with rain and he gave her a lift home in his red sports car. He was at least in his forties and quite vile .... she was a naive yet well developed fourteen year old! She managed to fend him off on both counts but ...... Mr Gough if you're reading this you should hang your head in shame!!!!!

As someone who went to schools in the 1970s which still used corporal punishment, I can see arguments on both sides.

On the anti-corporal punishment side, some teachers (a small minority I'm sure - I don't think there were any in my school) got sadistic/sexual pleasure out of using the cane or slipper. That to me is such a massive argument against that it more or less kills the debate. Also on the anti-side, some recipients of corporal punishment may have suffered some lasting psychological damage.

Having said all that, you may be wondering whether there can really be another side to the argument. In some respects I think the cane did work. When I was at school the teachers were very much in charge. I can't remember any teacher ever being sworn at by a pupil and I can't recall any real challenges to the authority of the teachers (and I did not go to a posh school with nice middle class kids). I think the knowledge that any such dissent would have resulted in 3 strokes of the cane is probably the reason why. No pupil was ever suspended or expelled. We did not live in constant fear of the cane. It was only used for serious offences and in my day I think most pupils went through school without ever receiving it.

My own experience. I only once received corporal punishment shortly after joining primary school when I would have been 4 or 5. I scribbled on the paper in the art lesson rather than drew whatever I was supposed to be drawing. I was not deliberately being naughty, I did not understand what I was supposed to be doing. The teacher smacked my bottom in front of the class and made me cry. Did I deserve it ? No. Did it do me good ? Possibly, because I learned the consequences of misbehaviour and never received corporal punishment again.

I came very close to getting the cane when a teenager in secondary school. I never did anything that bad, but was very immature and sought attention. I was threatened with the cane several times and I came very close to getting it. Looking back I think 3 whacks of the cane on my back side would probably have done me good and would certainly have stopped the bad behaviour.

Of course, corporal punishment in British schools is gone for good and I am not really suggesting it should be brough back, but I would be interested to hear the views of anyone currently in the educational system, either a teacher or pupil.

Urgh! Thats disgusting and perverted! This is me speaking as a 13 year old still at school, and if my head teacher did anything like that... Urgh! Words can't describe how it feels!

I rather agee. I just feel that if schoolchildren need to be thrashed then it should be bending over rather than making contact with the teacher carrying out the beating.I also think it is disgusting when people start saying they had to have it on the underware or bare bottom. School smackings should be carried out on the fully clothed child.All the schools i went to didn't smack girls and us boys always got it on the trousered bottom.

Well the police should have been called and she should of been hung. That would have been the best option, but as it goes all she got was a naughty smack, thats not punishment atall.

I am female and was in my teens in the late 70s. I was caned once across the hands by my headmistress and got the ruler across the knuckles- also the slipper twice over the skirt.

I dont think girls ever got the cane across the skirt but only across the hands, which happened 3 or 4 times a year in our school.

I was in an all girls school but I gather from my husband that boys were punished a lot more.

Given the state of todays loser feckless youth, one wonders whether a spot of discipline might do them good.

Kerinda

i was at school in the 70s, and corparol punishment was accepted as the norm, in fact my maths teacher was ex army officer and he hated me, and saw fit to punish me for not having highly polished shoes, for not carrying a hanky.
not being able to answer his questions immediately,and so on. his punishments were all about humiliation for those he did not like, one of his favs was to make me stand on a chair with my arms held out to the side and if i wavered and he noticed he made me turn my palms upwards and put books on them and of course these got heavy and so i wobbled he would make me stand in front of the class and i had to tell my fellow class mates how stupid. he would say you are stupid are`nt you (surname) and i had to reply yes mr taylor i am am stupid. i am now 50 yrs old and it is still a vivid memory. and i never use the word hate as it is such a strong word to use, but for this teacher i can honestly say i hated him

Well, as a 58 year old teacher who's taught at the same private secondary school since September 1971 (I feel old!!!) I have to confess that the 1970s and 1980s were a time when we did think corporal punishment was acceptable and necessary discipline, although I always felt a slight unease when boys were receiving it in my presence. There was something always very brutal about it to me.

I have never (thankfully) had to personally use the cane or any other implement on any pupil in my career, although in my early years at this school under two previous headmasters the option was always there for me to do so. I threatened to use it a good few times, which always did the trick, but us teachers also had what was known as the "Referral Slip" option, which absolved us of the physical responsibility of administering this ourselves.

I did issue quite a few referral slips on boys to go and see either Headmaster, Deputy Head, Head of Year, Housemasters, and even till the early 1980s, prefects were called on to dish out swishes of the cane and slippers for the younger boys on various teachers recommendations for more minor offences, following you understand established school guideleines and policy that was in place at the time.

Those referral slips invariably earnt the unfortunate recipient miscreants a few thrashings that I and other colleagues simply weren't prepared to undertake ourselves, even though we could have done! I was instead very often a responsible adult witness present for many of these punishments though, and I can tell you they were far from civilised punishments in my view. I felt on occasions the punishments simply went too far and were too brutal, especially when undertaken by school prefects - thankfully prefects being able to administer these on our behalf ended here in September 1981 when there was a change of Headmaster.

Unfortunately CP was an established school policy here at the time, and had been so for generations beforehand, and parents backed all this very often, although I do remember one very angry father coming to see me around 1980 for what he saw as an unjust referral slip for a school prefect punishment that I had issued on his son! I also remember in the late 1980s being confronted by an ex pupil in the town centre for a Deputy Head's Referral Slip I had issued when he was 14. I think he was 26 at the time he confronted me so it must have been in the mid 1970s when things were a little different. I didn't even remember the occasion or in fact the boy in question, who was now standing before me as a fully grown respectably business suited man!

CP was a legally allowed discipline procedure at the time. You must remember as a mere "backbench" teacher I was powerless to stop it happening. Due process, as the Americans would say, had to be allowed to be followed.

However, change did thankfully come about, when the current Headmaster took over in September 1985. He made a point of only him or his Deputy being allowed to carry out ANY corporal punishment in the school whatsoever, and only for very serious offences, as an alternative to expulsion or suspension, which we all thought was much more civilised. This cut incidences of such punishment right down to a very low level and corporal punishment was finally abolished at this school for good in September 1992, the last caning having been carried out in February 1992, at the request of the pupil himself, might I add, as an alternative to being expelled for blackmail and money lending with menaces. I'm not sure it did the poor lad any good though, as I read in the local paper he was arrested, charged, found guilty and imprisoned for exactly the same offences in 2002!!!

As we know, CP was made illegal seven years later.

Personally, all these years on, I'm glad corporal punishment is no longer a feature at this school or any school. I think in 2006 we have moved on from such practices, although who is to say future generations might not think it a good idea to restore it. However, I shall be long since retired and probably dead by then thankfully!!!!!

I was a pupil at a school in the 1970s which is when, it seems, the world began to change on this subject. While I was at school we were pretty accepting.

Its interesting hearing about this from the teacher's perspective. I find it incredible that prefects were allowed to dish out corporal punishment up to 1981 - that seems to be a recipe for resentment. I think we respected most of our teachers but prefects - that's a different matter. The cane was an option up to and including sixth form (I got it once at that level which was probably fairly average) so I think we would have felt very differently about corporal punishment if it was dished out by a contemporary fellow 17 year old.

One of the points Wolves Fan raises is that it sounds as if when the 1985 regime came in and corporal punishment was much more limited that this took out some of the controversy which led to recipients being aggrieved for a long time. We had a black mark tariff system to which one built up depending on the offence and that led directly to the use of the cane and the number of strokes to be applied - presumably WolvesFan your system was less transparent?

Wolves Fan uses the word "thrashing" which seems to sum up how at his school the balance did not seem to be right. In my own case, canings at the school were not endemic or, I believe, capricious and were never given in anger so I don't remember us calling it that - usually it was just a less emotive "I am up for the cane" or "I have been awarded 4 stripes". My memory is a bit hazy now but I am pretty sure that if one of the few teachers allowed to cane had been involved in whatever incident led to the punishment, they would have been, as we would now see it, "conflicted out". To be honest, I think, as Wolves Fan indicated, the psychological element was a very strong aspect to the punishment which is why, on personal experience anyway, "brutal" is the wrong way to go about it. On those occasions when I was caned, the more "punishing" elements were: (i) usually waiting until the following day or later that day to be punished and your classmates knowing you would be caned (like most I did not like to be singled out), (ii) you (mostly) deserved it and none of us liked being found out and (iii) the moment when you were given the order to bend over - usually delivered in a resigned way - and then holding on while the teacher maybe practised a few strokes in the air.

Don't get me wrong, the actual caning of your backside would usually sting but these other aspects were pretty good deterrents in themselves. One always knew how many strokes you were about to receive so in this limited personal example, I don't think it could be described as "brutal". I should add that at my school you had to bend over for the cane - it may sound odd but I think we were glad we were not caned on the hand which we imagined to be more painful.

We had good discipline at my school which I think allowed the school to thrive. WolvesFan's experience suggests that you did not have to err far from this model to leave the corporal punishment system discredited and presumably contributed to its abolition - and certainly I would not want to have been at a school which permitted this. In 1975/76 I am sure most of the boys at my school would have voted for its retention of the cane because we all disliked detention so much. There was something just so offensive to us at having to spend our leisure time stuck in a class room doing pointless exercises (eg lines).

I accept of course that the logic of what I say is that if the cane had suddenly been abolished in 1976 and replaced by detention/withdrawal of privileges our behaviour would have improved. But to be honest it was not that bad in the first place and is it hardly surprising that pupils and rules are likely to conflict at some point?

i went to school in the 70s and teachers would leave the inprint of their hand on my legs and that was for going across the room trying to get my asthma inhaler from the window sill.
i remember when i was about 6yrs a kid was slapped so hard his face was bleeding.

I was at primary school throughout the '70s (from 1973-1980). Yes there was the cane but I can't remember more than a handful of people ever actually getting it. We had one class teacher when I was 8 who would whack us across our knuckles with a wooden ruler but, other then that, punishment was limited to a couple of smacks with the teacher's hand either on the back of the hand if, like me, you were a girl (yes I know a tup is a male but, trust me on this one, I'm definitely female!) or a boy who happened to be wearing long trousers or across the back of your legs if you were a boy wearing shorts. Once, in the infants, a boy in our class was in such trouble that he was dragged off by the headmistress and promptly given the slipper on his bottom but that was the extent of the punishments used.

In my last year of primary school, when I was 10 though, I remember one incident where several other girls (mostly the class swots!) and I had been reported to the deputy headmaster over an incident in the playground one lunchtime. Immediately after afternoon registration, the deputy head came into our classroom with the cane in his hand...and proceeded to lecture the whole class on how and why such behaviour as our's (although he didn't mention us by name) was unacceptable and wouldn't be tolerated. That certainly scared a couple of my partners in crime but then, after smacking the cane down on the desk at the front of the class, he simply walked out and left us to carry on with the afternoon's lessons. Even at 10 yrs old, I lost all respect for him in that moment - I *KNEW* that had we been boys, had half the group not been the class swots, he would not have hesitated to cane us.

By the time I went away to a private boarding school (1980-1987) though, things were very different: I even managed to get the cane on my first day! There, in the 1980's, both girls and boys got corporal punishment for all manner of things and probably very, very few people didn't get it, for something or other, at least once a term. People even got it just for silly little things like slamming doors! It was done with either a cane or the strap and you got it either on your bottom or sometimes on the back of your legs.

I think, back then, things were different; as kids, we were very different to the kids of today. There was a certain honour involved in being able to take your punishment without crying about it. In my school, it wasn't unknown for kids to even find themselves getting into trouble on their last ever day at the school and yet they'd still bend over and take their cuts without complaining or whingeing because that's what you did; honour demanded it. Now I can't imagine any teenager letting a teacher cane them without first putting up a fight, let alone when they know that in a matter of hours, they'll be walking out of the school never to return anyway.