Ruler on the hand

When you got the ruler on your hand, was the teacher or head sitting or standing when administering it? Also did you get it on both hands or all on one hand? Did the teacher hold your hand still or did you have to hold it out yourself?
In my experience, I got two on each hand from the headmaster in his office at the age of eight.

At the age of 9 boys and girls received it facing the nun in front of the entire class holding out their hand without assistance.  It was on one hand with a half dozen or less hits.  Boys got it a lot more often than girls with girls never getting it on the knuckles.  I got it once and only once and that was on the knuckles.  It didn’t do me no harm.  I know 11×12  = 132.  A girl was never sent to the office to get the stick but one was turned over the knee and spanked.  At that age I didn’t realize that gender made all that much of a difference.  I didn’t have one misogynists bone in my body.

Hello debdebdew80,

And if the above is your first contribution here may I please say a personal welcome to the Forum.

The ruler on the palm of the hand was a common punitive resort of teachers when I was in Primary (or Infant and Junior as we called it in those far off days of the late 1940s and early 1950s).  I was a very nervous (and consequently extremely well behaved) little lad and did not personally experience that punishment, though I did survive a leg smacking and a slippering. 

When rulering hands different teachers used different techniques.  Some would carry out the punishment at the pupil’s desk, some would call the recipient to the front of the class where, as you note, some would sit and others would stand to administer punishment.   Some would grasp the recipient’s wrist and hold the hand in position, others would require the unfortunate pupil to cooperate in their punishment by proffering their hand or hands and maintaining them in position for the required number of strokes.

In the latter category I recall an unusual (ar least in my experience) technique used by a female teacher when a girl  withdrew her hand at the last minute.  Clearly the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, and who can blame the poor girl!  After a couple of abortive attempts the teacher made the girl sit in the high teachers chair and pull back her skirt and told her to hold her hand palm up above her legs.  As the teacher clearly anticipated the prospect of the ruler striking her bare thigh if she withdrew her hand was sufficient to stiffen the girl’s resolve and the punishment was duly concluded.

I only ever saw this done once, and I was quite surprised many years later to find the technique mentioned in the now defunct (I think) ‘Abyss’ sorry, Abbey’s  Forum and then subsequently, in the context of the tawse, by a contributor to this Forum here.

Younger children in rural areas were cared for by woman.  The men faced the hardships outside the home.  Schoolmarms held their charges to high standard.  There was no padding. This was not fantasy in 1916 at frontier schools.

Men, farther from the frontier, would use the ferule and not the rod when chastising their naughty
female scholars.  Reenactment put on by female school tours usually have girls getting it on the hand and boys on the bottom.  Maybe their teachers suspect that some boys already have their proclivities.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn … 58%2C4757/

Hello American Way,

American Way wrote:There was a recently deceased member of the PH.D. Community that posted quite frequently that vacillated on the ruler. It might do untold harm he opined then he did a trial balloon hoping to get our response as he lauded its benefit,to no avail, for its immediacy without needing to fill out reports.

As you know I take a keen interest in past contributions by those who were members of our former PhD and PhD table communities¹.

Your above reference fails to ring a bell.  I’m sure you are right, you usually are, but would it be possible please to give me a little hint of some sort on the ‘trial balloon’ to stimulate my increasingly aging and inefficient memory.  If we are discussing the contributor I think we’re discussing the ‘recent’ in your first sentence may be a tad misplaced.

I like your linked picture above.  Apart from being the wrong means of chastisement it reminds me of standing in the queue for Miss B’s tender ministrations.  Indeed that could be Miss B, and the second in line the juvenile Another_Lurker after he’d had his leg smacked, well apart from the child in the picture being the wrong sex.  But as the picture clearly shows, nowadays even little girls wear long trousers or their equivalent, and apart from possibly a couple of kids towards the end of the queue even well practiced Miss B would have been unable to secure easy exposure of the requisite target area.

Note 1:  The PhD and PhD table communities. In the days before the sundering of the Happy Circle most contributors were members of the Happy Circle community.  Some also belonged to other exclusive  communities in addition, and for those who had indicated, accidentally or otherwise, that they possessed a Doctorate those additional exclusive communities included the PhD community and the PhD table community.

For the distinction between those two communities I cannot do better than refer to the official definition by the Forum Management  here.  Sadly it is necessary to scroll down through a lengthy quote annoyingly added during the conversion to Tapatalk.

Alas, as far as I am aware none of the 4 former members comprising the two communities for PhDs still contributes here.  One member of the PhD community ceased to contribute not long after the sundering of the Happy Circle. One person from each of the communities departed to another Forum at the time of The Great Schism.  One of those latter two, who also contributed here posing as a retired hard caning deputy headmistress of a northern grammar school for girls and a currently active hard paddling female AP in a southern US high school and various other characters is, as American Way says, now deceased.  The remaining contributor, from the PhD table community, gave notice that he was no longer going to contribute in March this year, though he did make a brief reappearance later

Recent is a relative term so I should have said relatively recent.  That person that assumed an identity, that I figured out was an impostor but you knew all along for it suited your fancy, was the one I was referencing.  I have put that behind me even if it never escapes my memory.

No one cares about hands more than I do so I could not give an objective answer to the use of a ruler.  Before he assumed an identity that was neither his race nor gender he expressed his concern with the safety of corporal punishment on the hand with the same solicitude as the brace position.  A poster noted the number of years the ruler has been used without problems.

Subsequently there was the “trial balloon” that went without response.  It would be a bit laborious to relieve readers that doubt my memory for me to reference these recollections with confirming links.  A_L if you don’t feel confident I can do so for you for you have done me so many favors.

Hello American Way,

American Way wrote:It would be a bit laborious to relieve readers that doubt my memory for me to reference these recollections with confirming links.

Absolutely no need for that!  It would indeed be a huge task and I am sure you are correct, it is my memory that is at fault.  I only asked because I thought perhaps you had recently encountered the ‘balloon’ post and been reminded of the incident in the context of this thread,

American Way wrote:That person that assumed an identity, that I figured out was an impostor but you knew all along for it suited your fancy, was the one I was referencing.  I have put that behind me even if it never escapes my memory.

Yes, I assumed it was him.  Apologies again.  At the time it seemed for the good of the Forum, there wasn’t much other entertainment around.  Also, like the fake deputy headmistress that went before I wanted to see if (s)he would offer personal presentations of the flagellatory finesse involved outwith the educational environment.

As you may recall (s)he did.  Alas no guarantee of sharing a whacking with cheer-ready cheerleaders or  skimpy shorts selecting sophomores.     And just as with the fake deputy headmistress ‘terms and conditions’ specified that before bending over trousers had to be taken down, though they could be replaced with a single layer of thin PE shorts.

A pity that when (s)he was conducting extensive interchanges with former contributor Renee of ‘Teachers Who Paddle’ here and in Renee’s blog (s)he never sold that latter idea to Renee.  It would have livened up the cyberspace conference room!  

American Way wrote:A_L ………… I can do so for you for you have done me so many favors.

It’s always been a pleasure and feel free to ask any time.  But I’ll have to go now.  I feel a nun with a ruler coming on!

KK has noted how mothers so often intervene when their darling loved one is on the receiving end of corporal punishment.  I wonder if something like this happened now as it did in 1913 how it would be resolved.

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH19131031 … ks——-1

Whenever I got the ruler in class usually as I was capable and willing to answer back, the teacher was always standing and had to hold my hand out without support.

Hello American Way,

Very amusing videos embedded in your contribution #10, which I somehow overlooked at the time.  A good find.  I liked the diminutive ‘teachers’ and the large heavily bearded ‘students’.

We don’t hear of youngsters being hit with a ruler on the hands anymore.  Ferule is a word one rarely hears.  It came in handy, with no pun intended, to foil an old trick.

Manistique, Michigan 1887

https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers. … ——-0–

https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers. … ——-0–

She is from Chico, TX where out of 7 high school girls in 2013 that were paddled.  I am sure padding with armor doesn’t come to them as a surprise or an obstacle to the one tasked when armed with as fierce an instrument of correction as a paddle.

https://schoolswats.files.wordpress.com … g_7866.jpg

https://ocrdata.ed.gov/Page?t=s&eid=520 … 7&pid=2072