Boys want cane for girls
Boys at an English grammar school objected
to being caned when girls only got detention. The boys got ‘one of the best’ if
they got five ‘black marks’ they told a newspaper in 1960, but girls got ‘soft
treatment’. The headmaster said ‘the girls are punished orally.’
A letter writer called the boys ‘ungallant’.
As
published in the Argus (Brighton), 21 September 1960
As
published in the Argus (Brighton), 24 September 1960
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I wonder how a 14 year old girl felt about a presumably male newspaper reporter publicly describing her as "plump"?
ReplyDeleteI think at another school in the same era it was the girls themselves who demanded to be caned. In the name of equality. The inequality regarding caning was probably quite common at the time. But this particular school seems to have had a wider problem with different treatment of boys to girls. The first/last name thing especially seems odd.
But needing five "black marks" for one whack with the cane isn't very harsh. Some schools for the offense of forgetting swimming kit the punishment would be doing the swimming lesson nude and probably a slippering as well. Not just 20% of one whack of the cane.
The discrimination of "summery uniforms" still happens. But now in 2026 the boys fight back by going to school wearing skirts instead of long trousers. Probably wouldn't have got away with that in 1960. But would've been allowed to wear shorts?
In my experience this kind of inequality in the UK was far from rare in the 50s and 60s with many schools reserving corporal punishment for boys only with girls receiving non-corporal sanctions instead. As regards use of surnames or first names, at the two senior boys only schools I attended it was surnames only whereas at nearby girls only schools it was first names. Whether this disparity was common in mixed schools I'm unaware but other readers may well have an insight.
ReplyDelete