Question for our American members.

I can't imagine it does and it certainly won't include caning or any kind of corporal punishment as corporal punishment was made illegal in state schools in 1987 and in all UK schools in 1998. To be honest I doubt it even existed in the 1960s and 1970s when I was at school (although corporal punishment by teachers was certainly still legal). I think it was a Victorian 19th century thing and would have been abolished after the first or second world war.

What I would like to know is if any girls or mixed (US coed) public schools ever had a fagging system? As I like male/female corporal punishment stories I sometimes think about writing a story set in an imaginary public school in the 1970s that has gone mixed but still has kept its fagging system. And now girl pupils can be used as fags by the prefects (still all boys) for jobs and caning. Unfortunately I doubt a school like that ever existed, but it is nice thought for me that one might have.

I read that that the US college fraternity and sorority systems with pledges and hazing were copied from the British public school fagging system.

markuk - I went to state schools in the UK and left the system in 1969, and they were still caning at my old school well into the 1980s.

From what I gather from the few Public School boys I met during my working years, they kept the old fagging and flogging system going until it was banned, but places like Eton now operate in a totally different way to what they did. They are now lucrative businesses rather than boarding schools for the aristocracy.

Brosse6markuk - I went to state schools in the UK and left the system in 1969, and they were still caning at my old school well into the 1980s.
------------
I went to state schools in the UK. I started a state primary in 1967 and left my state secondary school in 1981, at 18. My state secondary school was coed comprehensive that had converted from a boys grammar school a couple of years before I started, when grammar schools were abolished by the LEA. It still had most of the grammar school teachers though, who were mostly male, and tried tried to keep the old grammar school ethos of school uniforms and discipline. Caning was still going strong when I left in 1981. And the teachers now had girls to cane as well and with women's equality and anti sex discrimination laws appearing in the 1970s saw no reason not to cane and slipper the girls as much as boys. Actually more so and to an older age maybe. I don't suppose corporal punishment was abolished until it was made illegal in 1987.

I don't think I've met anyone ever who went to Eton or anywhere like that. But as all schools, both state and private were changing from single sex to coed in the 1970s, perhaps my fictional public school, with girl fags, would be possible if they kept there old fagging and caning systems as long as they legally could.

I have met a couple of ladies who went to all girls Public Schools and they don't talk about what went on. Yet the State school girls will as do the Public School boys.

One girl I know wrote a book on her Convent experiences, but it was more about her "relationships" with other girls and knuckle wrapping with rulers from the nuns.

I lived in England from 1967-1973, attending three different schools during that time. One didn't use CP at all and one only the headmistress used a ruler. I've bitched about my experiences with the third school on multiple threads already; the short version is that both teachers and the headmaster could cane (and one of the teachers was a sadistic bastard who especially enjoyed caning girls on their knickers in front of the entire class to embarrass them in front of boys).

That must have been highly controversial, even in those dim and distant days. Didn't the parents complain?

Well, that would depend on several factors, I'm figuring, one of them being how much control of his/her classroom a teacher was given, including in terms of discipline--obviously in this case (circa 1970) it was considerable in that school.

If that specific teacher was reasonably smart, he would cane some boys in front of their classmates too, ideally on their undershorts, presuming he was allowed to. Even if he focused his caning attention on female pupils and may have punished them that way for lesser offenses than he did for his male students, he would be able to state truthfully that he caned members of both genders in front of their entire class.

No matter how suspicious of the guy's motives his pupils may have been, presumably none of them could validly claim telepathic abilities--thus if he was intelligent about his caning approach, it would be quite difficult to prove that he demonstrated any obvious animus against his female students, in the sense of trying to embarrass them, beyond the inherent humility of enduring corporal correction on their underwear in front of their classmates.

While as a former high school teacher I don't approve of the current trend toward administrative 'micromanaging' of classes and teachers, I must concede that in times past the great authority over corporal punishment given to schoolmasters may have attracted people with sadistic and/or 'power-tripping' streaks.

I'm thinking of male characters in two American literary classics, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, in both cases they taught in one-room schoolhouses and employed the classic "hickory switch" (or something similar) quite liberally.

As I've mentioned here before, I had the authority to paddle my pupils here in Texas for about a decade, of course given my spankophile tendencies I had *zero* intention of ever doing so...

--C.K.

That was a very sensible approach and an honourable one.

The point I was trying to make about mj's post, based on my own memories of that period (when I was also at school in the uk, though admittedly an all boys school) was not to do with gender discrimination, but rather that the corporal punishment of girls above the age of puberty on their bottoms by a male teacher would have been quite controversial, to have punished them on their knickers doubly so, and to have done it in front of male classmates trebly so. So I find it hard to believe that such a practice could have continued long before parents were up in arms about it, the matter was raised in local newspapers, etc etc, Even in those spank-happy days, teachers didn't have complete carte blanche.

It was the same at my school.You'd be surprised in the 1970s things were very different. Benny Hill was primetime family TV entertainment. People seemed much more accepting of these things. Their fathers' most likely spanked the girls bare bottomed at home anyway (my father certainly did with my 2 sister's) so why would on the knickers be such a big deal at school.

The other thing to remember is that, certainly in my school, the girl's skirts were so short that even two steps up a staircase you could see their knickers.

My wife tells the story that she left the house to go to work in the early 70s, and her Mum shouted to her as she walked up the drive that she was showing her knickers. My wife shrugged and carried on.