School Secretary’s

The secretary of my school was a rather genteel older lady but she must have listened to a good many whackings over the years. One of the dilemmas of the job must be what sort of face to present to the waiting offender(s). A judgemental frown? A sad shake of the head? A sympathetic smile? Or maybe she avoids eye contact altogether.

Nowadays privacy laws would prevent that, else the headmaster might find himself in a reverse position to do penance and keep his job.

While doing research I read that i my state the cane was retired the year I started school and in the year prior to our school trip to England, parents were supposed to find other ways than corporal punishment to convince their offspring that they needed to change their ways too. We had a lot of fun at school thinking of 1st formers, having to discuss their misbehavior with their parents. Since the law didn't state corporal punishment it was 15 to 20 years later clarified. Prior to the the year 2k there was a law clearly stating that corporal punishment is forbidden by law. I think previously undignified punishment was outlawed.

Dear Moody, Here in the UK CP was officially outlawed in the mid to late 1980s. However, it did continue for a while with "off book" punishments.

My own grandmother was just approaching the end of her career when the ban came in. The options then available were suspensions, expulsions or useless detentions. Several of the girls did ask to be spanked instead on the basis no one would know and they certainly didn't want their parents to know what they had been up to.

The prevalence diminished over about 3 or 4 years but exclusions rose and everyone was worse off as a result.

PGreenham
I'm sure you're right, my memory is awful!

Jo,

CP was banned in UK state schools in 1987 but it went on until 1998 in private schools.
The number of times i was threatened with being sent to strict girls private school as a teen.
I don't think there were any that used the cane by the late 90s. Plenty of boys or mixed schools which wasn't what dad had in mind.
Even when mum and dad went to school in the sixties and seventies it was rare for older girls. Mum's grammar school banned it and brought it back went it became a mixed comprehensive.

I have a story about a secretary to a principal of a high school getting spanked and paddled by her boss titled "Elaine Gets Fired" by John Strict

Jo,
My school days would have overlapped with your parents, albeit in Ireland.

I had cousins in England( near Wolverhampton) and also in Scotland ( near Paisley). We would visit every couple of years and they would come to us in the years in between. My English cousins , both girls, confirmed that their school did have caning. But they couldn't described it exactly as they had never witnessed it. It seems to have been relatively infrequent and was administered in the head's office, never in the classroom. The caning was on the clothed bottom ( trousers for boys , skirts for girls)

In Scotland, the practice was similar to Ireland. All teachers used CP . It was delivered in the classroom, was an almost daily occurrence, and was of course witnessed by all. It was usually delivered on the hand with a strap. You were only sent to the principal/head teacher for some thing serious or for being regularly in trouble. Only then were you likely to receive the punishment on the bottom ( clothed).

In contrast to the school, at home, spanking seemed to be more common with my cousins in England. Of course, this was tonly my experience so difficult to tell how accurate my impressions were.

I think every school was different. I’ve had a few tales from older relatives but I’ve no idea how typical they were. Scottish schools used a heavy strap called a tawse on the hands in front of the class. I’ve never met a girl or boy who went to school in that era who didn’t remember sore hands. They all remember rumours of what happened if you were sent to the head but I’ve never met anyone who admitted to it
In England and Wales it varied. Mum and Dad passed the 11 plus and went to grammar school but 2/3 of students failed and went to the secondary modern which was fee with the slipper and the cane. Most girls felt got the slipper but they believed you got caned on their bottom if you were naughty enough. The girls grammar school didn’t believe in it but Dad has a list of mostly funny stories. They made too much noise waiting for the swimming and the whole if the first form, year 7 and again in year 8, had to bend over in a long line across the quadrangle while the gym teacher walked along applying his slipper in the traditional manner. They wondered he didn’t get tired whacking 120 boys. Whole class slipperings were too numerous to mention and carried on through year 11. The cane was usually on the non writing hand or one on each but if you needed more than three it was applied lower down sometimes in front the class.
When the schools merged to make a comprehensive the older girls though the mostly male senior staff wouldn’t smack them. They were wrong. Dad relates about a group of 15 or 16 year old girls getting their legs slapped for talking in assembly. A boy would have been caned in private but imagine the embarrassment. Smacked in front of the school and walking around with your legs covered in hand prints. There wasn’t a lot of trouble after that.

The states I lived in as a child / teenager, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, did not have a culture of spanking at school back at least as far as the 60's, so I have no personal school experiences. As I'm sure you all know, each US state today regulates corporal punishment in schools, so there are 20+ states it continues in theory.
The states we raised our children in, New Mexico, Colorado and Massachusetts did not permit it, so I do not even have any second hand stories from other parents or our kids' friends. Probably just as well.
Except ... everywhere I ever lived or now live there were references to the nasty nuns at the Catholic schools. Today, many states laws that prohibit CP have an exception for religious schools. Go figure.

On a related note, there have been a few stories where this took place at work rather than at schools. Some where the bosses or underlings, either males or females were the ones being spanked.