Believe me, as the father of daughters, I am no believer in the sugar and spice theory.
I also strongly believe that wherever possible, education should be individualized and that students should be treated as individuals. I ‘go that extra mile’ constantly with my students.
The thing is, though, I have to be a realist and deal with these issues in the real world – not purely theoretically. When it comes to the issue of corporal punishment, the single most important real-world issues I have to deal with are legal issues. If they passed a law tomorrow banning the use of the cane, I would have to follow that law, no matter how much I believed a particular boy would benefit from the cane. Legal issues and responsibilities take precedence over and above my own personal beliefs on this issue (and not just on this issue, but this one is somewhat unusual in that legal issues are so much more potentially important than in most other issues).