I have comparatively little experience of the ruler. In secondary school only a couple of teachers used it and it was more symbolic than a real punishment. I can only remember being in one teacher’s class for the two years I was in infant school and, there, the usual punishment was a slapped leg. My first experience of the ruler was in first year junior but I wasn’t at that school long as we moved across town sometime that year.
In my next junior school, the ruler was used quite a lot more but we had one teacher for everything for an entire year. It’s quite possible some of the other teachers did use the ruler much more severely than mine – I was just lucky not to be in their classes.