Memories: Caning was just a pain in the backside

 I was caned at school. It did not ruin my life, and I have no plans to sue for compensation. Nor did it build my character. To me, it was just a pain in the backside. –  Mick Hume, writing in The Times (London) in 2002.

With fellow parents a while ago, I mentioned that I had been caned several times at grammar school. One woman looked at me in horror. “Caned for NOTHING, I suppose!” she cried, and others nodded in sympathy.

No, I pointed out, on the contrary, we were caned for fighting, bullying, persistent smoking, vandalism, petty theft, and obscene insolence — you know, all of the usual adolescent pastimes. But still they looked at me as if I were a victim of child abuse.

The cane was a “punishment of last resort”.

That’s what it was when I was at grammar school in the Seventies. By then, only our headmaster was allowed to administer the cane. Which was just as well, given the state of mind of certain other teachers, such as the little sadist in stack heels who made miscreants taller than him get on their knees and crawl to the front of class, so that he could look down on them while issuing detentions.

The headmaster used a piece of bamboo about a yard long and sharpened at one end, like a big novelty pencil. He was kind enough usually to deliver strokes with a straight arm, so reducing the impact a little. Boys to whom he took a particular dislike received the full bent-elbowed whiplash. He tended to gather a few boys in his office to be punished together, to make you sweat and watch each other get it. This also had the effect of making you want to tough it out in front of your mates, trying to walk out as straight and nonchalantly as you could on shaking legs. The exception was the boy whom I recall running out holding his backside as if it was on fire, and going to the changing rooms to sit in a sink, while making hissing noises with his mouth.

Some other state schools were keener on corporal punishment than ours (not to mention what went on in the private ones). One friend of mine, just old enough to have received the leather strap at a Catholic boys’ school, recalls the relish with which certain teachers doled out beatings, especially the games teacher who enjoyed whacking boys on the behind with a cricket bat, and the bitter disappointment with which they greeted the abolition of CP.

On the whole, schoolchildren may well have been better behaved back then (although I wouldn’t overdo that point). But what is often forgotten is that the cane was used in schools like ours as part of a system of discipline. There were clear rules to keep and lines to stay within — although we sometimes broke and crossed them, we always knew where they were and what the consequences were likely to be. Good, tough teachers tended to have our grudging respect, and we got on with it.

The headmaster’s sharpened cane left no scars on either my arse or on my soul. But nor did it beat me into shape. The cane may not be an instrument of medieval torture. But it is certainly no magic wand to make our child-raising problems disappear.

Extracted from The Times, 16 September 2004.

 

Picture credit: Sting Pictures

 

For more True Memories, click here

 

Traditional School Discipline

Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com