Perhaps the most striking feature of these memories is not the punishments themselves but how ordinary they once seemed.
Children watched classmates being punished and then returned to arithmetic.
Someone might disappear to the headteacher’s office and reappear ten minutes later.
At break time, pupils discussed what had happened before moving on to football, marbles, skipping ropes or whatever else occupied the playground.
What seemed perfectly normal in one generation can appear extraordinary to the next.
That does not mean everybody who experienced old-fashioned school discipline remembers childhood unhappily. Many former pupils speak warmly about their schools and teachers while simultaneously admitting that certain disciplinary practices now seem difficult to imagine.
Nor does it mean that every teacher enthusiastically supported corporal punishment.
Schools, teachers, parents and children were never all of one opinion.
What these recollections provide is something rather more valuable: a glimpse into everyday British childhood during an era when ideas about authority were very different.
The plimsoll was designed for the gymnasium.
The bedroom slipper belonged beside the bed.
Yet for generations of British children, both acquired another association entirely.
Today, an old-fashioned black plimsoll might simply look like an inexpensive piece of footwear.
For those who remember the classrooms of half a century ago, however, it can bring back the unmistakable atmosphere of a very different school age.
