Corporal punishment survey 71

Hello kevinont,

I reckon that I’m 20+ years older than you from the data you gave earlier in the thread.  I said I noted similarities to your experiences in my own school days.  One of them was that lots of kids then got CP at home.  I didn’t really, except for perhaps an occasional slap, but many of my primary school schoolmates did, girls as well as boys, from slapping right up to caning.  The local pram, pushchair and baby/young child stuff shop also sold canes, sort of begin as you mean to go on I think!

But that was in the late 1940s, early 1950s. By the time I was at secondary school I’d say  even though SCP still had some way to run in schools CP in the home it was on the downward path.  I certainly don’t think it was as common over here in the early 1970s as you suggest it was in Ontario.

There was quite a lot of SCP in my primary school, in the classroom or wherever the class was, and in front of the class.  Classes were big, 50+ pupils wasn’t uncommon, and there were no teaching assistants or other adult helpers for teachers, so they needed punishment expedients which were quick and didn’t require leaving classes unattended or sacrificing too much teaching time.  CP was ideal, so that’s what they used.   In addition I’m certain that there was an element of pour encourager les autres involved in punishing in front of the class. There was an incentive to behave when you saw pretty close up what happened to those who didn’t!  In primary school we had  hand rulering like you. No strap, but instead the slipper, a flexible rubber soled PE shoe used on the bottom.  And slaps!

Leg slapping was then the Swiss army knife in the SCP inventory of the lady teachers who were the majority in that primary school.  Classroom convenient, unisex (all boys wore short trousers to school and all girls wore skirts or dresses then  so bare leg was readily accessible), and highly  scalable in that it could readily be configured to meet differing requirements.  A quick slap in passing just above or below the knee to signal ‘that was a bit naughty’ for a minor offence.   At the top end the indignity of physical restraint pinned under the seated teacher’s arm while bent over at her side, back to the class, for exposure of, and protracted hard slaps to, tender upper thigh, a process intended to impress on both recipient and observers the seriousness of the matter.

I got the latter once.  The only SCP with me as recipient that made a big impression on me throughout my school career.  I was a very shy and somewhat nervous little lad who mostly kept himself to himself, well behaved and trouble avoiding – usually!  However I was the first pupil in my year group to be in receipt of SCP, though two others were dealt with shortly after me in the mass punishment involved.  My ‘crime’ was a careless word to another child while lined up waiting to march into school class by class, when silence was mandatory.  My nemesis was Miss B, a very strict and officious young lady teacher from the next year up who was on playground duty.

Possibly some of the erring boys and girls queuing up for punishment in front of Miss B’s large mixed class of older children merited  a top end leg slapping (though I don’t think I did) and maybe  it was a case of one size fits all for convenience.  I was second in line.  As the girl in front of me  from Miss B’s class returned to her seat in tears I was seized, pulled into position and pinned in place.  It probably wasn’t long before I was on my way back to my own classroom, also in tears, but it seemed an age.

Short trousers were fairly short and not very tight,  but it certainly took longer to secure access to the target area in my case than it had to lift back the girl’s dress.  And, as others here have reported, it did feel as though sufficient trouser leg elevation to bare at least some bottom was the aim, though that didn’t happen to me, nor did it  on later occasions when I saw other boys so punished.   Close but not quite!  I was absolutely mortified at being the helpless and very unwilling centre of attention.  The actual barrage of smacks when it came wasn’t much fun either!

For most children being punished like that probably wasn’t too traumatic.  But for anyone as shy and withdrawn as me the embarrassment and indignity of having my leg bared and being made to wriggle in pain and cry in front of other kids was about as bad as it could get,  You said of your strapping that you weren’t too concerned about having your trousers down because it was in private and only the vice-principal knew.  I’ve said here before that if Miss B had punished me in private and my trousers and underpants had had to come down it still wouldn’t have been half as bad.  However punishment in private was a luxury you didn’t get at that school.   As it was  I resolved never to get corporal punishment at school again and apart from a mild slippering, again at primary school, I succeeded.

Oh dear, this is already far too long!  The problem is that that event and the other SCP (not mine) incident which made a big impression on me are still rather vivid in memory.  More on the latter, and on SCP in my schools in general, later.

another lurker hi I just read this post and the actions of mrs b I was interested by your comment on the pulling up of trouser legs of the boys and bare bottom exposed was this the case of a small proportion of  bottom not covered by the material of the underpants or when the leg of the material was raised the underpants came up too I saw this happen to one boy where he got both pulled up for the teacher too have his bum cheek bare too be smacked

Another_Lurker wrote: Hello kevinont,

But that was in the late 1940s, early 1950s. By the time I was at secondary school I’d say  even though SCP still had some way to run in schools CP in the home it was on the downward path.  I certainly don’t think it was as common over here in the early 1970s as you suggest it was in Ontario

For most children being punished like that probably wasn’t too traumatic.  But for anyone as shy and withdrawn as me the embarrassment and indignity of having my leg bared and being made to wriggle in pain and cry in front of other kids was about as bad as it could get,  You said of your strapping that you weren’t too concerned about having your trousers down because it was in private and only the vice-principal knew.  I’ve said here before that if Miss B had punished me in private and my trousers and underpants had had to come down it still wouldn’t have been half as bad.  However punishment in private was a luxury you didn’t get at that school.   As it was  I resolved never to get corporal punishment at school again and apart from a mild slippering, again at primary school, I succeeded.

thanks for the reply and your story, just wanted to be clear on what i said, that it was “common” for warning shots, “uncommon” for any actual spankings in the 70s at school (just in case another Ontario Canada member is here lol) Also spankings were on the downward trend at homes especially late 70s into the 80s and beyond(just not me and my sister lol!).  From my perspective very few ever said or hinted at receiving a spanking at school to me or that we all knew was not a rumor. This was my personal memories of school. It was more the threat of one that we all knew about.

So in reading your memory and post, maybe it was a luxury to be done in private where i went to school. I know i would have been extremely embarrassed if a spanking was done in class especially in front of girls at 12/13 for sure! Yes maybe some will say, you would not have got in trouble again, true…but the lasted effect of everyone knowing i think might have been haunting for awhile, maybe a life time.

They refer to the instrument of correction as a leather paddle soaked in brine.  It looks more like a strap than a paddle.

The Day Book.  September 6, 1912

How striking convicts were flogged.

http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bi … ing——-

viewtopic.php?f=198833&t=2568&p=67878&h … rap#p67878

About Me:
Gender: Male
Approximate age when punished: 12
Approximate year of punishment: 1992
Crime committed or alleged: Not doing my homework

About the punishment
Administered by: the teacher who give it to do (my homework)
Gender of staff member: male
Location punished: in the classroom
Type of punishment : the wooden ruler
Number of strokes: 10
Applied to : bottom
Position adopted : bending over the teacher’s table
State of dress : over my pants
Privacy : in front of the whole class

About the school
Name of School: 70
Town: Bucharest
Country: Romania

Effectiveness
Were you ever punished again for the same offence?: YES
Do you consider the punishment effective?: YES

Hello,

May I ask you a question about this survey?
I’m not native english, so maybe I understand it wrong, but …

In the last two Questions about Effectiveness you ask:

Were you ever punished again for the same offence?:
Do you consider the punishment effective?:

Many People answer ‘Yes’ to both questions.
So I’m a little bit confused. What es meant by the word ‘effective’ in this context?

For my understanding the punishment could be either effective, or someone is punished for the same offence again.
Isn’t the purpose of a punishment that the punished person will not do the same crime again?

Hello Ptery,

And may I say a personal welcome to the Forum.

School corporal punishment was apparently banned in Romania in 1948, but the ban seems to have been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.   Contributors here who had visited Romania have commented that at various periods since then  there was quite a lot of corporal punishment of children in both schools and homes.

Our contributor HH, who has written the definitive work on Canadian school punishment straps and campaigned extensively regarding domestic corporal punishment of children in Canada notes in a contribution here that his wife was at school in Romania from 1982 and later became a teacher and taught in village elementary schools there until 2003.  At school she saw other children punished with a wooden ruler, and although she did not use corporal punishment as a teacher she saw other teachers hit children on the palm with a ruler.

I can recall only one previous contributor from Romania, Ramona36 back in 2012.  HH makes reference in the above link to her contribution, which is to be found here.  As you will see Ramona36 also reports the use of a ruler like implement on hands, but also sometimes on the buttocks, as in your case.

Hello Another_Lurker,
I’m from Germany and corporal punishment in schools was banned there before I started school. For a long time I thought that hitting children in school was something that belongs into historical Stories. For me it was never ever something that could fit into present life.
I was very surprised when I learned, that for example corporal punishment at school was something normal in Great Britain in the time when I was a schoolgirl myself.
Maybe this is the reason why I have a logical problem with some things that I read in this forum.

So, if I understand right, you mean that the punishment is considered effective when the punished person don’t want to redo the crime after punishment.
So I think it could be interesting to know the reason why the crime was committed again in spite of the effective punishment in the past.
Was it forgotten? Was the crime interesting enough to risk a second punishment? Played a possible punishment a role in the decision to do the crime? Was it a clear decision to do the crime or was it something that happened accidentally?

the term effective can certainly be subject to a large range of interpretations here. a punishment could be considered effective if it caused the student to immediately quit school to avoid its repetition, though that would hardly be the ideal response. it could also be considered effective if it prevented the offense from occurring again but haunted the person for the rest of their life. you might even consider it effective if it just made the person cautious enough to not get caught but didn’t actually prevent them from engaging in the activity(i suspect this would be the case very often with smoking, which cp had at best limited success at stopping but moderate success at driving out of the view of the authorities)