How did teachers practise caning? There must have been some skill involved if it was to be effective.

Good question. Flagellant web sites often say that you need to practice before you can use the cane safely. We know that local authorities issued guidelines about how to use the cane, but I think these were mostly just very general "dos" and "donts". (They usually said "only on the hand or bottom", "never on the bare flesh", "not more than 6 strokes", and sometimes "not in front of other kids", "onlyl by a teacher of the same gender", and "no group punishments".) They didn't give instructions about how hard to hit, what part of the bottom to aim at, or all the things which modern recreational spankers are told to pay attention to. Perhaps, in the Olden Days most of the people who became teachers had been Prefects when they were at school, and had learned how to give out canings "on the job" as it were. But by the 60 and 70s prefects would certainly not have been allowed to use the cane. And I expect that the sorts of people who became teachers had mostly been well behaved, conforming children who were never in trouble. Could it really be that on their first day as a teacher (or when they first get promoted to head or deputy head) they are handed a cane and told they can use it even though they have never caned anyone, been caned, or even witnesses a caning before.

Perhaps teacher training colleges used to do a couple of seminars about how to use the cane; I expect the trainee teachers had to break up into pairs and practice on each other, that way they would have some experience of using the cane and also know what it felt like before using it on an actual student.

Or pehaps this is why state school preferred to cane boys hands or slipper thier backsides: this takes much less skill and it is much harder to go wrong.

It would also be interesting to know how the cane manufacturers and suppliers tested their products...

Andy

I recall an account from an American who taught at a traditional boys school for a term as part of some exchange program. His very first duty was to supervise the dorm where he was also accommodated. Within a very short time a prefect delivered a couple of boys for caning for breaking silence after lights out. The American asked what he was supposed to do and received sketchy instructions from the prefect. His first attempt was feeble - he did not want to hurt. This resulted in further gross disorder. He soon realised that he need to cane hard if he did not want to cane often.

I think that most boys who have received the cane at school a few times very quickly come to realise the essential features of a good caning and where the cane should land. Boys tend to discuss such things amoung themselves. The transition from the fast end to the slow is easy. As one of my teachers told me - it is not really possible to cane too hard. One or two good strokes are much more effective than any number of feeble. This is assuming the cane has been chosen for the task - not too big and heavy. Thereafter, pratice makes perfect.

A lot of teachers like myself use to practice before giving our first caning.This was done on an old pair of school trousers/shorts padded with a cushion or pillow. A chalk line use to be drawn on these trousers and light strokes given aimng at this line. Later it was done much harder with the cane being chalkedso as to leave a chank mark where it landed. When you could getr it to land every time it was "safe" then to use it on a boy.
Many cringe and complain it did not happen, but most teachers, certainly on their first caning
did it on the bare bottom, or made a point of trying to see the boys bottom in the shower that day or the next. The reason being to see if the strokes had landed in the correct place and if they had been hard enough or too hard. Boys reactions as the cane struck their bottom was no guide as to how much it was hurting. Some would yell in the hope the other strokes would not be done so hard while others may try and tough it out but in fact endure a more painful caning than intended.

George

George

Heaven forbid you were ever a real headmaster, of any school, other than fantasy.

The mere thought or suggestion, of a person in such a position trying to take glimpses of boys bare bottoms whilst showering , is despicable.

However, I am curious to know, how a pair of padded school trousers can adopt a suitable position of bending,

Please, do enlighten us George.

K

once again you try to read something sinister into the post. Teachers did see boys in the showers and often to see if the cane had been applied hard enough or too hard.It is no more sinister than the mum wanting to see the marks on her childs bottom after a spanking from dad. It is high time that you accept the fact that looking at a boys bottom does not imply something sinister

George

I practiced by doing which I think was the normal method of doing things when I got started.

I'd been caned at school myself and that gave me a pretty good understanding of what was involved.

When I was training to be a teacher, we had a couple of classes that included discussion of the legal right of teachers to use corporal punishment in state schools and the regulations which governed that, but it was probably less than fifteen minutes in total, and when I found myself doing my teaching practice I rapidly found out that the regulations were ignored in some schools at least - I saw a girl strapped on the first day, which was expressly forbidden, and I was given a strap and told to use it if I had to, which student teachers were not supposed to do. The knowledge was also fairly useless as I didn't wind up teaching in the state system.

My first Headmaster when I became a teacher wrote me a memo explaining what he expected of me with regards to the use of the cane, along with a copy of the schools regulations on corporal punishment, and that contained a bit of advice on how to do it. But I didn't really practice. When I had cause to use it, I used it, and over time I got better at using it.

As I'm writing this, I feel reluctantly compelled to speak up in George's defence. Part of a teachers job is supervising their pupils and if you have large numbers showering at school that does mean the showers have to be supervised as well. And to supervise you have to look. It isn't a matter of craning your eyes and finding a way to have a peek in my experience. But if a boy I'd caned went past me soon after I'd caned him, I certainly had a look to see what I'd done.

We have a bit more respect for the boys privacy today, but even today it's hardly unheard of to see a pupil naked. They still do sport. They still need to change and shower. And they still need to be supervised. And you can't do that with your eyes shut. There's looking and then there's looking, of course.

Do you think that the flagellant literature (I mean, things written for adults who whip each other for fun) who say that the cane is very dangerous in unskilled hands (because it may strike too low or too high and cause injury) are exagerrating? Or is it that SM canes are much bigger than the sort used in real schools?


Is it true that the reason for caning the bare flesh was to allow the teacher to see the marks that he was making and any other marks on the victoms buttocks? I had always assumed that the excuse was a: to make sure there was no padding, b: because it hurt more c: to cause embarassment d: to create a sense of drama and tension ?


What about teachers who were never caned as children. (I went right through school without ever getting caned or ever even seeing a cane. It was done at my school, but behind closed doors, and only to the worst kids -- bullies and vandal -- not for naughtiness and mischief. I'm betting it was the well-behaved kids, not the bullies and vandals, who went on to become teachers.) If I had become a teacher (and I might have done) and you had handed me a cane, my only impression of what to do with it would have come from "Beano" comic. Does it ever happen that a new teacher asks to take a couple of strokes across his own behind? This isn't just a kinky fantasy (although it is that as well, of course!) If it was part of my job to cane boys, I think I might want to have experienced what I was giving out at least once, myself. I believe that American policeman who use "tasers" have to be shot with a "taser" during their training...

I'm really not particularly familiar with flagellant literature. I've encountered some of it, and what I've seen, seems to me to exaggerate quite a few things. Perhaps they do use heavier canes, or larger ones and that's what they are worried about. Perhaps they use the wrong type of cane - one thing that we have stressed to parents over the years is that you can't use garden canes. Our school gets proper canes from a proper supplier, but that's not easy for everybody to do. The wrong type of cane could be dangerous.

I have, on a handful of occasions, more than three decades ago now, caned boys on the bare bottom. I did so with the intention of increasing the severity of the punishment in cases of extreme misbehaviour, in cases where boys should have properly been expelled and I wanted to make it very clear to them that they were in the most serious trouble. My intention was to make it hurt more, certainly, but also to send a clear message to these boys and to others who heard of it that what they had done was absolutely unacceptable.

I can't say why other teachers have done it. I have to say the idea of doing it to see where the cane landed doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I only did it a few times but I really do not recall marking appearing fast enough to give me instant feedback. In a case where I gave a boy more than six strokes, by the eighth and ninth strokes, I could see that I was causing damage that was unacceptable to me but that is how long it took for marking to form. I really don't recall seeing enough to tell me where the cane was landing any more than my own eye watching it land. A good caning will leave marks but the immediately visible marks weren't really that noticeable. And honestly, I don't think most teachers new to caning are going to be accurate enough that knowing exactly where a stroke landed matters much. The seat of a boys trousers is a surprisingly small area. Precise placement takes a lot of practice.

I've had a teacher ask to observe a few canings when they became authorised to use the cane so they could get some idea of precisely what they were supposed to be doing, but it's hardly rocket science. Really, you just have to know how not to cause unintended effects for reasons of safety, but once you do that, I think it's learn as you go. The first few boys I caned, I know I could have done a better job but I didn't injure them and I made it unpleasant enough for it to work and that is what mattered.

I have to agree with George. I was caned at secondary school. The lesson immediately afterwards was PE and yes it was noted that I had received the cane when I had a shower. I was 15 at the time.

David/Dominum

There is some dispute on the forum whether George ever was a teacher/headmaster.

The majority of his post refer to the caning of boys bare bottoms

The majority of his post go into detail of his caning techniques, on bare bottoms admiring his handy work, the welts he caused , on bare bottoms.

Punishing boys on their bare bottoms in the presence of other boys waiting the same fate, bare bottomed.

So it continues,

I don’t dispute at some time past, boys were caned bare, but since the 50’s the normal practice was to administer punishment over trousers. For the recipient, considered painful and marking the skin.

Showers were communal, any marks would easily have been spoted by the supervising teacher or other pupils. And if this had been the teacher that administered the punishment I don’t doubt many would have passing glimpse

George writes

_Many cringe and complain it did not happen, but most teachers, certainly on their first caning did it on the bare bottom, or made a point of trying to see the boys bottom in the shower that day or the next. The reason being to see if the strokes had landed in the correct place and if they had been hard enough or too hard_.


Can you honestly believe any teacher/headmaster who caned a boy, who wasn’t the supervisory teacher of showering, would take the trouble to note the boys next PE lesson, albeit the same day or following day, take time out, leave his study, or class unattended, wander to the to shower on some other pretence to check his handy work.

Is George now going to tell us, after his observation of the bare bottom, if he considered the strokes had not been hard enough or landed in the right place, the boy was subjected to a repeat, a bit more bare bottom practise..

K

I am very well aware of the controversy surrounding George. But as there are also people who have doubts as to my own veracity, I don't think it is appropriate to state my views of whether or not I believe George to be genuine or not. It just wouldn't seem right.

But I am prepared to comment in general terms on what happened in schools, and what seems to me to have been likely or reasonable practice in schools and that's why I commented on the issue of seeing boys bare backsides. There certainly could be something inappropriate going on that lead to that happening, but there are also real scenarios where it was quite normal and not in itself suspicious.

In my experience, and based on talking to others who I know to have been real teachers, some of whom still are, it would have been a very unusual school in the twentieth century where bare bottom caning was normal and routine. I cannot say that there were no such schools, but it was not a normal practice. On the other hand, schools where it occasionally happened, in very serious cases do not appear to have been all that unusual.

Few people would have said anything against a schoolmaster who occasionally administered such punishment, but one who did it more than occasionally would have, at the least, been viewed as having somewhat suspicious motives.

In terms of showering and seeing things, a Headmaster, who as you describe made a deliberate note of when a boy was next going to do physical education, and who then deliberately made sure they just happened to be around the showers at the end of that lesson - again, he would be likely to attract suspicion. Doing so, very occasionally, might not do so - if you knew it wasn't his normal practice, you might think that perhaps on this occasion, he was worried he'd caned a boy too hard. If he did it at all often then opinions would probably be less likely to allow for that possibility.

But there are other scenarios that are less suspicious. At the time when I caned boys on the bare buttocks - and let me stress I did it less than half a dozen times in extreme circumstances, I was Deputy Boarding House Master and then Boarding House Master of my school. I was responsible for the supervision of the boarders. That's why I was the one saddled with their serious misbehaviour, and it also required me to exercise close supervision of them. I certainly didn't come close to supervising every shower, I did look in fairly often - in a boarding house environment, if you let boys decide there's a place they are completely safe from supervision, you get real problems.

Our school also has compulsory sport every Saturday morning, with compulsory sports training two nights a week after school. The only way we can have every boy in the school doing sport, is for nearly all the teachers to be coaching a team. And it means that twice a week we have the entire school in the change rooms and a large proportion of the staff walking around those change rooms. Doing that, I've seen a lot of boys undressed over the years. It's not suspicious, it's normal. We do try to give boys a bit more privacy today than in the past, mainly because they are shyer, but it's still not unusual to see a boy without clothes, nor is it suspicious - and not that long ago, it was even more common.

And there were even a few occasions, where because of what I'd seen, I queried the punishment a boy had received.

Omce again you have tried to take my comments out of context.I said the FIRST time a teacher caned a boy, if it was on clothing he would try to see what marks he had left on the boys bottom. The reason being to see if they had landed in the correct area and had not been excessive. In most schools games took place twice aweek and every teacher knew what year was doing games and when. As most schools (junior) had mainly female teachers, and it was the male teachers that tended to cane boys, they were required to take games and so supervise the showers.For a teacher wishing to see that he had not caned a boy too hard or in the wrong place and not on games it would be easy for him to do so. He just had to walk into the changing room. No class to leave as games tended to end at the same time as shool ended boys were showering in their own time after school.

Their is nothing sinister in a teacher who has caned a boy on trousers or pants for the first time wanting to see the marks to make sure the punishment was reasonable. Their is also nothing wrong in a teacher who has caned many times wanting to see the marks as bhe may be worried he had done it too hard, or felt the boy had extra pants on but not sure enough to make him drop his trousers at the time of the caning. With padding the marks would be much less than normal.

Please do not take my comments out of context. The comment you quoted clearly stated the first time, but you twisted it to say it was every time

George

What kinds of marks would be considered a: too hard b: too soft c: just right?

I’m with George, and that chap in the little red blazer who masturbates over Miss Lawrence, on this one. I was refused entry to the Pants Club (George’s Yahoo group that closed down before it opened) but I bear no malice. If a man cannot choose who he has, or doesn’t have, in his Pants Club then it’s a sorry state of affairs.

Don’t forget, also, that George is one of the country’s leading scholars of Middle English. He did not write the following, but could well have done so:

Oft have I canered the baree botomen of nautie boyn,
Sommen wert eighte eek othern wert noin.

It is difficult to get the cane to land on both bottom cheeks, so I suggest the caner stands with the cane holding arm level with the rearmost part of the bum. When the cane hits the nearside cheek its flexibility will allow the end to wrap onto the far cheek with equal force.