When answering, please state what part of the world you lived in and the general time period you were in school.
We had it when I was in school. I graduated high school in 1991, lived in the southeast, usa. It was a leather strap. I got it quite a few times. The last when I was 12 or 13 I think.
As far as I know, it’s no longer done in public schools. Wikipedia says its still legal in this part of the country, but when I posed the question to younger people, who went to school in the 90’s/2000’s, I was told they had never heard of it being administered.
In the public schools I attended in Virginia (mid-1980’s to late 1990’s), corporal punishment was forbidden as far as I remember. I can’t remember where I learned this.
Permissible punishments as far as I remember were informal warnings, formal writeups/letter home to parents, parent/teacher conference, grade of F (limited circumstances - you could apparently get it for Cheating or for Truancy, but not for fighting or being saucy) detention, alternative program (reform school lite), reform school (though I never knew anyone who went there and it may have been a myth), out of school suspension, and expulsion.
Classes that used a “token economy” system could include point fines for violations.
It was a parochial school circa 1960. But when push came to shove, shove came to blows. There was never a thought as to any repercussions such as complaining parents
Yep. Last time I got it was 7th grade, when a group of us were sent to the Dean of Boys for something. After we were interviewed, we each faced the door, grabbed our ankles and were sent on our way back to class with a swat from a large wooden paddle.
Heck, standing orders to my teachers from my father were “Smack him if he gets out of line, then call me so I can smack him again when he gets home!”
When I was in grade school (late 70’s, Catholic School) the principal had a large wooden paddle that was used on miscreants. This included one memorable occasion where the PA system was (accidentally or on purpose) left on during the paddling, leading to a spontaneous outbreak of good behavior that lasted quite a while.
7th Grade, 1969/1970, the Bluebird of Happiness was a broken hockey stick wrapped with blue cellophane tape to make it sting more, used in gym class on naked boys including me. This was a distant suburb of Philadelphia.
Yeah, now they have to ‘call the parents’, and can’t even touch the child. :rolleyes:
Then they all stand around and wonder “why are teenagers shooting up schools?” :smack:
Over half the time parents don’t even correct their children, don’t get me started on the screaming kids in the supermarket (seriously, don’t, I’ll go on for hours)
Oh yeah, that’s right there’s even some horrendous law about spanking your children :smack:. When I was a kid (a whole 14 years ago, grew up not long after I turned ten) the only thing that kept me in check was the threat of my dad’s belt. That’s the only thing he’d use, and I only had to get it once, after that I made sure to not do anything that deserved more than a swat from my mom, end of story.
(I live in the USA, but now thinking of moving somewhere before the next generation grows up…scary, they’ll make gang wars look friendly)
I went to mostly private schools in Wisconsin during the 70s. I don’t recall corporal punishment as in “bend over and take your spanking.” Teachers did have the right to hit or smack or whatever if they felt you needed it. One teacher might be known for using a ruler, another might be an ear puller.
In high school, the school disciplinarian or whatever he was, got mad at few of us punks one day and grabbed me and shoved me against the lockers and told me I better start wearing shirts with proper collars on them. That’s about it.
Private schools were stricter and teachers didn’t take crap. I think the threat of getting smacked was enough to keep kids in line, and I don’t recall kids pushing things far enough to ever get hit very often.
Public school in Oklahoma, graduated high school in 1987. Vice Principal still had the paddle, and would use it. I, however, was a sweet innocent angel who never needed to be managed by that level of oversight.
Pakistan. Private School. 2002. Got the cane; threw another boy out of a window (he was annoying me.). 17 strokes . Was the first kid in about 3 years to get punished and I think the last; it was never used normally.
They did have other punishments which you wish you were beaten; try 20 rounds of the hockey ground in gym shorts in freezing weather. Or their favorite; 10 pushups, with the damn punisher telling you when you went down and came up, Could make 10 pushups last half an hour.
I grew up in Colorado. When I was in middle school (a.k.a. “junior high”) in 1971 there was still corporal punishment. I never got walloped, but I saw another kid get it with a paddle a couple of times. A big wooden paddle.
The only one I got was having to “sit” with my back against the wall and knees at a 90-degree angle with no chair or other support under my butt. He would vary the amount of time you had to hold the pose depending on the severity of the offense. My worst was ten minutes. If I hadn’t been a skiier I don’t think I could have done it that long.
I’m only 26 and yes. When I went to elementary school they still used the paddle sometimes. I very clearly recall troublemakers who feared the paddle up to 5th grade (1995-96). I never heard about it anymore after that year, but I’m not sure if it’s because they quit using it or because they only used it on the little kids. Paddles aren’t a very scary prospect to middle schoolers. I went to primary school in Hobart, Indiana (Joan Martin elementary school).
Also, I recall that the lady who ran my small preschool walloped the shit out of kids’ bare asses (in front of EVERYBODY) with her bare hand. Never happened to me, thankfully. That would have been around 1990.
Oh yeah. The coaches did it in junior high, 1974. Go to the gym. grab your ankles and they used a boat paddle with holes in it. Not their full strength of course. I got a small bruise but nothing to get excited about. My dad was waiting for me at home with a belt too. For causing trouble at school. So I got my ass whipped twice every time.
I’m all for it too. Strong willed, dumb ass boys need a strong dose of discipline. Otherwise they’ll just take over and do whatever they want. I sure as hell did. They made a believer out of this knot head. After 9th grade I never go in trouble at school. Made good grades. I got a couple whippings at home when I was about 15 for getting caught with beer. After that I waited until I was 18 to drink.
I went to elementary school in Philadelphia (and, for a year and a half, Lower Merion, a suburb) in the years 1942-1950 (K-8) and I never heard of anybody ever getting corporally punished so I assume it was forbidden.
Class of 2003, public schools in rural Pennsylvania. CP was still allowed under state law, but my district stopped using it before I was born. In accordance with state law they still maintained a list of parents who notified the school they did not consent for CP to be administered to their child; I was on that list for the entirety of my school years. I’ve been spanked once in my life, by my mother. When I was a toddler and ran out into the road by our house and made a car almost crash into a tree.
English boy’s grammar school in the late 1960s. Very occasionally boys would be caned by the headmaster. This was pretty much considered the ultimate deterrent, short of expulsion. However, reports were that he hit quite lightly, and it did not hurt very much. Some teachers, though, had their own in class techniques of physical punishment. A history master known by the nickname Tosser (the usual explanation did not link this to masturbation but to his method of handing back homework) has a method he himself referred to as the “Tosser haircut.” This involved holding the hair near the top of your head and slapping the top of the head with his palm. In practice, this was completely painless. On the other hand, a geography teacher known by the nickname Felix used “the Felix treatment,” which involved several seconds of pulling or twisting the short hairs near the hairline. I experienced this on a couple of occasions and it really hurt! It also worked, I did not much about in his class again.
Both those teachers were pretty popular, although Tosser was not particularly respected. The younger boys (first and second years) tended to fear Felix (with reason), but for the boys in later years (grades, for you Americans) he hardly ever needed to use the “treatment,” and he was a respected and very popular teacher.
Other teachers who relied on sarcasm to keep kids in line, were much less liked.
I went to public schools in Sydney, NSW fron 1959 (kindergarten) to 1970 (5th Form). I used to get corporal punishment regularly in primary school (almost always for talking in class). It was quite legal then and legal in High School for boys to be given the cane (not legal for girls to receive corporal punishment by then)
I’m not sure when it was banned in public schools but has been for some time. The private schools held out for as long as they could but, in the end, it was banned there as well.