Here in Melbourne, most ‘traditional’ boys schools used the cane until at least the 1980s or early 1990s and used it fairly prolifically for much of that time. But one school – virtually identical to all the others in every other way – enacted a total ban as far back as the 1950s. One of my senior Masters went there as a boy, and taught there early in his career, and he’s talked to me about the significant cognisant dissonance, he experienced when he started teaching here – because the way we did things just seemed so totally alien. Yet at the time, our model was by far the normal model.
It is also true that life was very different for boys and girls at this time, with entirely different life expectations and opportunities. However, acceptance of this as a reason to treat boys in way they did ran right through to the commencement of the total ban. This was where females decided that they would try and pick and choose which areas of equality they actually wanted.