Many of the corporal punishment descriptions in the messages posted seem very severe.

At my primary school there was only hand smacking and this was rarely very severe.

At junior school it was stricter for certain offences like fighting, not doing homework or continually messing around in class. If deemed necessary a boy would be sent to the headmaster and would usually receive between 3 and 6 whacks with the slipper (a plimsoll) across the buttocks in the 'touch your toes' position.This could be quite painful and some boys would cry. If several boys were to be punished this would be done in the office one at a time with the boys all in the room together.

Corporal punishment at junior school amounted to nothing more than that.

At high school boys were subject to being disciplined with the slipper and also the cane.

Certain class teachers would make boys stay behind after class if they had done badly in a test or not done their homework or were judged not to have been paying sufficient attention in class.Punishment would usually be 3 whacks with the slipper across the buttocks but if the teacher was particularly irritated they could make you bend over for 6 with the slipper. After this you would have to go to the next class with your buttocks on fire.

PE teachers also liked to use the slipper to keep good order.Any form of disorder in the changing rooms would mean that the boy or boys involved would be in trouble. When everybody was showered and dressed those who were to be slippered had to bend over the bench and receive their whacks and the PE teachers were well known for giving the full 6.

The cane was only used by the head of year, the headmaster or a deputy head. The cane was for serious or persistant rule breaking. It was carried out in an office either in the 'touch your toes' position, bent over a table or bent over a chair. As it was for serious matters if you knew that you would be getting the cane you also knew that you would get 6 strokes.

Whether you got the slipper or the cane, it tended to be hard whacks. Boys were never caned on the hands and i never heard of anyone being asked to pull down their trousers or underpants. The power lay in that a teacher who disliked you could slipper your buttocks whilst other boys waiting watched on the pretext that you had not been paying attention in class.This was to put you in your place which it did as any disagreement about taking the slippering would inevitably mean a caning by the head of year.

Hope this is of interest and probably similar to other peoples experiences.

I wouldn't query any of this. It tallies with a great deal of other anecdotal evidence and sounds about right. What does strike me as odd is the use throughout of the
word "buttocks". This seems a curiously formal term to use in this context. Kids at school would never use it; they would talk about bottoms or backsides or, if they wanted to be provocatively vulgar, arses.

Buttocks – I like the sound of the word. It’s the kind-a word that a man’s gonna use if he’s writing in a formal style about corporal punishment. Some words make your willy go stiff. Buttocks is one of those words.

I suppose it depends on the school.

At my school (at least at the one where corporal punishment was most used), we certainly did use that word mostly because we were rather starved for choice in words we could use.

We didn't swear much - partly because we were too scared of the consequences if we got caught, partly because the school was fairly good at making us feel that swearing was actually a bad thing to do.

So words like 'bum' and 'arse' were out because they were seen as swear words - I'm not saying we never swore - but we virtually never swore without a very good reason.

'Backside' was lower class and vulgar - and we didn't like to appear that way. 'Butt' was American, and we certainly didn't like to appear that way.

The word our teachers generally used was 'bottom' and we used that as well - but once you reached the senior school (when you were 12) this was seen as a fairly 'babyish' word to use, and you didn't want to seem immature, either.

So we were pretty much stuck with buttocks.

Bum was the only word I remember being used for the buttocks. I suppose this could be confusing to Americans.

I do feel that so many accounts of corporal punishment at school on various sites and fora do seem to be of somewhat doubtful authenticity.  The postings start off quite reasonably and are interesting but, presumably as the writer gets more and more "worked up", lurid exaggerations creep in and I lose interest.

I was taught at Prep School by Irish (very un-)Christian Brothers who have a certain reputation for excesses when it comes to the CP stakes.  But even there, where it was freely available, no-one to my knowledge had to remove an article of clothing to get beaten.  OK, so the gym master used to slipper on shorts but nothing worse.

Unfortunately the strap was usually given on the hands so there was no leavening of the proceedings by the crypto-erotic use of the strap on the backside to titillate the rest of us boys.  In fact it was all too real, painful and guilt ridden so I avoided it like the plague.  Even the smelly maths master who used to use the edge of a ruler on the bottom managed to conspire to make it an unpleasant experience ...

Anyway, maybe keep the grosser exaggerations for stories and stick to the facts for these supposedly factual accounts?

Thanks

Paul

Paul's web page: http://www.cpcp.me.uk ... e-mail: mail@cpcp.me.uk

We had one teacher at our school that, if you were in trouble with him, would make you change into pe kit after school then make you stand with your hands on your head facing the blackboard for 30 mins (seemed like 30 years) then depending on the mood he was in would either say you were dismissed, or when he called your name and you turned round he would be holding a plimsoll and you knew what was coming next.