I was talking to some elderly people and we got to talking about school punishment. They were telling me “In my day, we had a paddle and if you were bad you didn’t get detention, you got paddle, and in front of the whole class.”
Then one of them jumped in with “In my school they drilled holes in the paddle to make it hurt more.”
So my question is “Does drilling holes in a ‘spanking paddle’ make it hurt more”? If so, why does it make it hurt more?
Drilling holes would reduce air resistance, the idea being that it could be swung harder and/or there would not be a ‘cushion’ of air at impact.
Less air resistance, leading to better speed/more force in the spank.
I’ve often wondered, does being spanked in school make you more, or less, likely to enjoy spanking as a sexual thing? Is getting the paddle from a sexy school marm the root of this fetish for some people?
I wasn’t paddled, and have no desire for any kind of spanking sex-play. Never tried it, though, so I guess it’s possible I might like it if I tried it.
Wouldn’t there also be something to a paddle moving at equivalent speed (though having slightly less kinetic energy), distributing the force over less area, which would hurt more as well?
I was a victim of paddling with wooden paddles with hold drilled in them. I can say it had no effect on enjoying spanking as a sexual thing (I don’t like it, and I don’t recall that I ever did). However, I can saw it was a wonderful deterrent to misbehavior. It was a very effective means of communication.
I don’t see how teachers can control their students today if they don’t get any support from their parents. You can’t spank the child, and everything is always the schools fault when Johnny isn’t learning anything. Never mind that little Johnny is nothing but a troublemaker and class disruptor.
Hey, that’s a neat trick. Thanks from me. (But probably not from my girlfriend.)
I went to public schools in Louisiana in the 1980’s - the early 1990’s. Our teachers had drilled paddles. We also had to sign them once we got paddled and the list was usually infamous. I have no idea if a drilled paddle hurts more than a non-drilled paddle but I do know that a drilled paddle doesn’t hurt much at all. We had the option of swapping a given number of licks for an equal number of days of suspension or detention. Nobody ever took that option. You would have to be an idiot to and everyone would have made fun of you for that. I would love it if work would offer paddlings instead of listening to imbeciles drone on and on about beaurocratic performance reviews. I would gladly take the licks. Simpler times I guess.
At the speeds the paddle is traveling, combined with its small cross sectional area, air resistance is negligible.
Yes, but not because of any special physical properties. It hurt more because at the beginning of the year the teacher would introduce her/himself, and second on the list was a loving description of their own personal, often highly stylized “enforcer”.
No kidding, I was a student in Detroit late 70s, early 80s, as my neighborhood went mostly white to almost entirely black. By 3rd grade all my teachers were black, and some of them had some pretty extravagant paddles, some with a real detailed history and ornamentation. Many of them were from Africa, made from wood from Africa, hand crafted and cursed by some witch doctor so it hurt more, made of denser wood, with beaded handles for a better grip, and so on.
Sure, most of the teachers were probably stretching the truth a bit, having fun giving us reasons to avoid the things, but it worked. Those storied paddles always seemed to sting just a bit more. The best one though, was the teacher that was so sure her paddle was too much for young kids like us, she kept a stack of paper plates on her desk, and depending on what you did wrong, she’d give you a number of plates to dull the pain. Didn’t matter, just being young, naive and thinking that thing was fatal was enough to scare the crap out of you.
Other teachers didn’t bother with the stories much. I had a gym teacher that had a heavy iron bar. He never needed to correct us. Of course, he was also a big, mean looking black guy, nobody questioned that he’d actually use it. I bet he never picked the thing up more than once a year during his fear-inspiring presentation.
Of course, you had the abusive types, but it was like with parents. One teacher only used a flexible ruler, but she used it all day long. Use the punishment too much, the kids got used to it, it became a pride thing to get smacked with it. On the other hand, the teachers that rarely paddled someone seemed to benefit from peer pressure effects, if they paddled you, you must have done something pretty bad.
As for spanking and sex, paddling was out before I started thinking about sex, at least, sex with older women (like those all the way in their 20s!), so I don’t think it had much affect. Of course today, a sexy woman is willing to get naked for me, I’m more than happy to spank or be spanked. Whatever helps keep her naked. 
Support from parents does not equal permission to take a wooden paddle to a child’s behind.
I’ve taught, and in 95% of my discipline problems, a call home was all it took to straighten the kid out. Maybe some of the parents paddled at home, but I doubt it. Mostly, they seemed to use grounding, revoking of privileges, extra chores, and the like, to get through to their kids.
Of the remaining 5%, most of those had some sort of learning disability or emotional problem that was really and truly getting in the way of them behaving in the classroom. The parents were almost always doing their best to understand what was going on in their kid’s head, provide appropriate limits and support, and work with the teachers.
The few remaining kids who were just incorrigible . . . well, yeah, most of them had uncooperative parents. There was almost always something else going on as well - drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness, truancy, that sort of thing. No paddle is going to help in those circumstances.
Okay, you’ve just sold me on corporal punishment. 
Stranger
Ah, yes. The Paddles. My dad was a junior high school math teacher, and generally regarded as the school disciplinarian. He had a paddle for school, and one for home. The one at home didn’t get hauled out much. My brother and sister and I were generally bright enough to avoid the sorts of discretions that justified use of the paddle. The things I recall being serious enough to warrant a swat or two were lying or fighting.
The paddle at school got a fair amount of business (including 3 swats for me for getting into a fight at school - the official going rate for that sort of thing). Dad would usually talk about who got swats, and I don’t recall it being a daily sort of thing - rare enough that it was interesting to hear about, but often enough that the kids knew it was a real possibility.
In high school, the PE teacher also had a paddle (a few other teachers did too - I don’t think any of the women teachers had one). He was a bit more creative in his punishments. There were certain things that you didn’t do - come to class late, forget your gym clothes, horseplay in the pool, etc. Each of the infractions earned you a “trip”, meaning that you had to run a relatively hilly course over about 2 miles within 25 minutes or so. If you didn’t want to run, then that was 3 swats. Most everyone that earned a “trip” did the run, but I do recall one of the guys (a pretty tough football player and wrestler) decided he’d take the swats. The teacher got all the class together to witness, and proceeded to dole out the punishment. No tears or screams, but you could tell it was not pleasant.
As far as holes in the paddles, I don’t recall that any paddles that I knew about in the school had the holes drilled in them, but I do remember that the general understanding among the students was that the paddles with air holes were to be avoided at all costs. It seemed to be the sort of legend where the kids didn’t have any first-hand knowledge, but had a friend who had received swats with the low-air resistance paddles.
This was all back in the late 60s to early 70s.
I don’t ever recall any of the swats I got or knew about where there was any anger associated with it, at least on the part of the adults, and mostly not from the kids. It always seemed to me to be something that you tried to avoid, but if you didn’t, you simply knew that it was the price to pay for your “crime.” In retrospect, it seems a lot more like a business deal than anything. I definitely didn’t ever associate it with violence (except as a preventative measure) as it was characterized in later years. I am aware of situations where spanking was more like a beating, but that definitely was not my experience.
Regarding the sexual thing, my pretty clear connection between paddling and my dad and PE teacher would probably have done in any fantasies had I ever been inclined that way, but spanking is never been anything that I’ve had any interest in.
phouka, I sincerely hope you don’t think I was criticizing teachers. On the contrary, I come from a long line of teachers. From my outside perspective, it seems like teachers just don’t get the support they need to effectively teach a class. I admire what they do; I couldn’t do it myself. It’s encouraging to hear that you got parental support with a phone call. That’s not how I stereotyped that in my head :).
I forgot about that! We used to sign the paddle too! When you got paddled, did you have to bend over and grab your ankles? We did. Oh what a terrible time to wear those 70’s style tight jeans.
Less likely, I think – going by my own experience, anyway. I went to public school in West Virginia from 1965-1977, and the paddling of problematic pupils was *real *big there. Having been the sort of kid whom teachers seemed to enjoy frequently hitting on the ass with a board, there are now very few things I find less erotic than the notion of paddling, from either end, and I’m about as perverted an individual as you’re likely to find. There’s just too much baggage of real violence and indignation attached to it in my mind.
As for the original question, I was always under the impression that the holes were there to raise bumps on the flesh of a smacked butt, like making an impression on modelling clay, so it would hurt worse and longer.
Oh, and since I missed the edit window; I didn’t mean to imply that I thought paddling was a replacement or had anything to do with the punishments doled out at home. Any punishment should be doled out on its own merit.
I think that the lack of a cushion of air made the difference. That, and there was more pressure, and more places where the skin would deform.
In addition to any real effects, the holes will make it whistle a bit louder as it is swung, which probably has the psychological effect of making the spanking seem worse.
It’s the holes themselves. Think in terms of actual contact. The skin protrudes ino the holes. They’re like reverse nails.