Bent for the Cane: five schoolgirl spanking tales

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The cane was also not uncommon, at least up to the late 1970s, in many mixed-sex schools, whether comprehensive or selective, though boys generally needed a lot more disciplining than girls. In these schools the punishment might be applied either to hands (especially in the case of girls) or to behinds, often depending on the whim of the teacher. Anecdotal evidence suggests that boys tended to be caned harder than girls. It's really too bad that caning has been outlawed as a form of corporal punishment in schools. While I do think there should be regulations as to how much is too much when it comes to hitting kids, a little fear of the system can prevent a whole lot of problems later on. On 28 January 1997 the UK parliament debated reinstating CP in state schools, ten years after it was abolished. The move failed, but the debate is not without interest.

Several more Labour-controlled LEAs followed suit in the early 1980s. It is a matter of conjecture how much part the anti-CP organisation STOPP played in causing this snowballing trend. Certainly, from the late 1970s onwards, it put out plenty of controversial propaganda, especially in the form of letters to local newspapers, but there is some evidence that the real push for abolition within a number of LEAs came rather more from left-wing Labour councillors in collaboration with a far-left ginger group within the National Union of Teachers (NUT) called "Rank and File", with which STOPP's (always small) membership somewhat overlapped. To put this in context, it should be remembered that the 1970s and early 1980s in Britain was a period when the extreme left was successfully infiltrating many local Labour Parties and several trade unions. Of course, she was not naive to the fact that many of the senior boys and prefects were harbouring a lustful crush. In the hormonal maelstrom of the Grey House senior common room, it was pretty much inevitable that a young, beautiful housemistress would provoke exactly this reaction. See also this May 1978 news item about unofficial slippering at a famous boys' comprehensive school in inner London. This was a rare case of the media writing about the existence of the slipper in their coverage of school CP, which usually dealt only with the cane. In this instance the local newspaper evidently thought it remarkable; but journalists have often been poorly informed on these matters, and the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that there were more, probably a lot more, slipperings than canings in English schools, at least in the 1960s and 1970s. At many schools these formal canings would be administered privately, often in the head's or deputy head's office or in the staffroom. "Public" ceremonies of formal caning in front of the whole school were rare in modern times, though not completely unknown. One education committee, Romford (then in Essex but now part of Greater London), unusually banned public CP in 1961 after six girls were caned in front of 600 schoolmates. An article by one who received school CP in the 1960s: what it was like, and how he feels about it now.The state education system in England and Wales used to be highly decentralised, and there were always wide variations of practice between schools, even between different schools of the same kind in the same area. The only rule laid down by central government was that all formal CP was supposed to be recorded in a punishment book.(1) Contrary to popular myth, the court found that corporal punishment, of the kind then routinely administered in Scottish schools, was not of itself a breach of the Human Rights Convention. To that extent the plaintiffs, who had initially claimed a breach of Article 3 ("inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"), in fact lost their case, a fact almost unnoticed when the outcome was reported. Well, Marling, a caning is a serious punishment. You are here because you have persistently misbehaved over the last week. I shall now try to show you just how seriously we take your misbehaviour. The cane is supposed to hurt and I can assure you that it will hurt - a lot. In the remaining private schools it was banned in 1999 in England and Wales, 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in Northern Ireland. Most had anticipated the legislation and abandoned CP voluntarily several years earlier. A few Christian private schools held out, and fought the ban through the courts, ultimately without success (see links below).

Auntie" took great delight at swishing and flexing the cane in front of me, informing me that it would hurt a great deal and that I would not be able to sit down properly for days, two statements that turned out to be absolutely true! I agree with Sara007. Why use a cane? It's just stupid, and meaningless. The kid won't even learn anything. Parents who use canes are the problem. They are the ones who turn the kids violent. After everyone had gone past Mrs Seaton came marching up. She looked at both of us as if we were something rotten that the cat had dragged in and, without saying a word, went straight into her office. Lindsey made a face at me and we continued to stand outside in silence. Now, I want you to bend right down over the desk, holding onto the other side. And you stay there until I give you permission!" Whatever the true explanation, the old adage of "cross me and you won't sit down for a week" had never felt closer to the truth.She got eight strokes, Marling. I don't think that young lady will be sitting down comfortably for a long time. But she was only due to get six strokes. My legs were trembling as I stretched myself over the desk. It was wide and I could only just hold onto the edge with my toes on the floor. I tried to make my grip as firm as possible and closed my eyes tight shut and waited.

Seeing her behind her desk, hands apart and holding the cane horizontal at the level of her slender waist, he began to truly feel the magnitude of his predicament. Grateful that at least the knowledge of their meeting would go no further, he replied promptly. "Thank you, Miss." Clearly, all the school authorities actually did wrong was to fail to spell out, in their information to prospective parents, that corporal punishment was a possible consequence of misbehaviour -- though I think they might have been forgiven for assuming that anybody who knew anything about anything would have been perfectly well aware that that was an entirely normal practice at boys' independent prep schools at the time. It was true that additional privileges and freedoms were granted to senior boys, but it was firmly on the basis they should be mature enough to work hard without such close supervision, and the suggestion this was to blame for poor test results had infuriated Sophie during that previous tutorial meeting. January, and the beginning of spring term, now seemed a long time ago, but she remembered their conversation clearly and recalled how she struggled to remain calm. The first stroke bit deep into my naked bottom, drawing an agonized gasp. Each subsequent impact raised the level of sting and throb to new highs. I only received eight strokes as, at that point, I could no longer control my bowels and defecated massively on the living room floor, much to "Auntie's" disgust. A withering invective followed, with much made of my bodily weakness and ineffectual character. Her approach is an extreme "children's rights" one - she clearly holds that it is quite immaterial what the teachers and parents might think, and that the child's supposed "right" not to be spanked overrides anything his parents say. I seriously doubt whether more than a minute fraction of ordinary people share this view. (She doesn't, as far as I can see, comment on the possibility that the child himself might take a different view, perhaps preferring being spanked to some other punishment.)My suspicion that there isn't really a solid consensus about this, and that perhaps an apparent consensus on the final outcome is being fabricated for reasons of political expediency, is strengthened by the fact that one of the judges here, Baroness Hale, goes so far as to say that she is "deeply troubled" by the approach adopted by the Court of Appeal. In effect she seems to be saying that the Court of Appeal reached the right conclusion but for quite the wrong reasons. Short article in History Today (2012) asserts that it was only in the 1890s that ordinary class teachers gained the right to use CP; before that, only head teachers were legally entitled to do so, under the common-law doctrine of in loco parentis. No source is cited for this claim. The author finds that, "far from being a relic of a cruel Victorian past, corporal punishment became more frequent and institutionalised in 20th-century England", but seems to overlook the obvious fact that the main reason it became more prevalent was that the number of secondary-school students soared, as the age up to which education was compulsory was steadily increased by law over the decades. While she was still on her way Mrs Seaton went on to say that, in the absence of the headmaster, she would be punishing the boys, too. She read out my name and form and that I was to be punished for being sent out three times, and then told me, too, to wait outside her room.