Just to summarise personally I was caned twice four and six strokes, and probably may have had more were it not for the fact that for the first few years at school, I was on a ‘no cane ‘ list mainly because I was a top performing student in the top stream who was ‘protected ‘ as the schools future, and secondly because I came from a one-parent family ( my father died young) and the school had some difficulty, as a rather patriarchal institution ( all boys) in dealing with ‘mothers’.
When I found out such a list existed I actually requested and eventually succeeded in being taken off it, ( the first and probably last person ever to do so!). This was because I perceived negative social consequences of being ‘special’ when, in my mind, I neither had a medical condition or a psychological reason why I should not face the same sanctions as all my friends. I also felt being on that list contributed to me being seen as something of a wimp! .