I have been in recently contact via email with Steve M and we wanted to have you share your thoughts on the subject. We had been talking about female teachers and Steve had mentioned about how severe female teachers were either at school or at home. He later revised this title but we decided to go with the original content of the topic after I said that when I was at school we had a system of grading the female teachers, which is as follows:

First category:

1. New teachers at their first appointments.

2. Teachers of the thirty something generation with a few years experience at the school.

3. The forty something group; most likely mothers themselves. Perhaps with kids similar in age to those they were teaching.

When talking about the severity of CP by these three groups, we took into account the offence for which CP was
given. Classroom misbehavour or failing to complete homework attracted minor CP, one or two strokes of the strap, whereas severe CP (3 to six strokes)would be handed out for offences such as fighting.

It was considered that for the most part, the middle group handed out the most severe punishments with the exception of fighting which seemed to be a pet hate of all groups and punishment by any of these groups was severe.

Now that you have this before you and you have taken into account that this happened outside the UK, what are your thoughts about the groups, whether it involved CP or other forms of punishment like Having to sit in detention or doing an Emu Bob of the school. For those unfamiliar with the term Emu Bob, it refers to picking up papers and rubbish around the school.

My experience was limited to infants & primary, both of which were 75-87 % female teachers.

The younger ones were usually out to impress themselves, or the imprint of the palm of their hand on you, in most cases. In one or two cases, ie Miss Dutton at infants in Camberwell, they looked nice, but.........

From my experiences,Mike's middle segment usually carried authority from the word go, but most were ready to re-inforce this with a smack or three. They were also as ready to do this to boys or girls as the new breed, but both sets tended to wallop boys more often. Yes, Lotta, that probably WAS because we seemed to misbehave more. Your lot are more sneaky and get away with it.

Not quite so much, though, with the older breed. These tended to be spinsters, but some were married with kids. I found out in later life that the married ones usually ruled with a rod of iron at home, but preferred to concentrate on withering looks or scolding, then taking that into the classroom.

The older Misses were usually the ones you did NOT arse around with. Some were simply very good teachers with the full command of their subject & therefore that much more able to inspire you into trying to do something with it. Unfortunately, my attempts at needlework at age 8 proved that my Dad may've been a sailor, but my chances of following suit were gonna be severely handicapped by the sewing equivalent of 2 left feet. Quite how you would see off Russia's red hordes just because you could darn your own socks, well, I never found out, nor wanted to!

Finally, there was that part of the older brigade of lady teachers for which Be Afraid, be VERY afraid was apposite. They may or may not have had moustaches, warts and brogues, but they invariably smacked-hard and often. Impossible to believe, but there were even odd occasions when such harridans took the miscreant to the Head-possibly because they felt the sinner was in safer hands than if THEY were caning or strapping!!

I will say overall that us lads learnt respect for women teachers very fast. The question was whether they tended to be pro-active in discipline to head us little sods off at the pass, or whether we thought they were a soft touch 'cos they were just BIG girlies. You can guess how quickly we were disabused of THAT notion!!

Hello Steve, well another very informative post and a look into your childhood. There are a lot of similarities to my own. I know we can look upon it as being humorous now, but it was a very different story back then.

I particularly liked the sentence; "The older Misses you did NOT Arse around with". I think it may be said that they got around you to get to your Arse! I know they liked to get to the bottom of things when I was in class. But naturally it would most definitely be a case of mistaken identity because you and I because you, like me, would have been a perfect little angel. Figuratively speaking of course.

My first teacher was an old woman who I must admit didn't fit into group three of my list. As for the home discipline side of things, I know a couple of female teachers, one being an in-law, but both I feel would have been very docile at home. At school it may have been a different though. As they say, the iron hand in the velvet glove.

I had a conversation with her at a family party one night, and she started talking about discipline problems in todays schools as compared to thirty years ago when she started teaching. Unfortunately we were interupted and subject changed to another topic we we resumed our conversation.

I did however get the impression from her conversation that she may have resorted to the odd ocassional session of hand meets behind, but I don't think it would have been her first choice of discipline. She would have been more likely to produce that certain look, or use a few well chosen words to get the desired result.

Now be nice to Lotta Steve, she has all the qualities of a school Prefect. School Prefects were always above suspicion and they were in a perfect position to use the eleventh commandment..... If you get caught, blame it on someone else!

In my experience the older teachers definitely smacked the hardest. My first teacher was young and a real sweetie and just slapped you lightly on the back of the hand if you were naughty. My second year infants teacher was middle-aged and she always pulled up your shorts (or the girls skirts) and gave you really hard smacks on the tops of your thighs that made you cry and left big red hand marks.