One of the most difficult questions raised by the survey is whether the severity of punishment corresponded consistently with the seriousness of the offence.
The evidence suggests that it did not always do so in any simple mathematical fashion.
Three for Talking
An eleven-year-old boy talking during silent work in 1971 received three strokes with the slipper.
He considered the punishment effective.
Another pupil might receive a similar number for running in a corridor.
Three strokes therefore did not correspond to one particular category of offence.
Three for Dangerous Horseplay
The West Country grammar-school boys caught play-fighting on a staircase in 1959 also received three strokes each, although the headmaster regarded their behaviour as dangerous.
The number was the same.
The context was different.
Six for Impertinence
The sixteen-year-old accused of impertinence towards his gym master received six strokes with the slipper.
He believed the punishment only partly deserved.
This illustrates how severity depended not only upon the written rule but upon the teacher’s judgement of the incident.
Six for Serious Offences
Six strokes also appear in recollections involving fighting, persistent misconduct and other offences regarded as more substantial.
The expression “six of the best” became familiar partly because six represented a recognised serious punishment in many schools.
But it was never a precise national tariff.
Eight Strokes
The survey contains occasional accounts of eight strokes.
These appear much less commonly in the English school recollections of the period and should therefore be treated as exceptional rather than ordinary.
The presence of a severe example in a collection does not establish that such severity was typical.
More Than Numbers
The number of strokes alone is consequently a poor measure of severity.
Three strokes with one implement from one teacher might be regarded by pupils as more formidable than a larger number administered differently.
The circumstances mattered too.
Was the punishment public?
Was the pupil very young?
Was this his first offence?
Had previous warnings been ignored?
Was the offence deliberate?
Proportionality
The principle of proportionality appears frequently in respondents’ later judgements.
Pupils were often willing to say, in effect:
“I deserved to be punished.”
Their disagreement concerned how much punishment they deserved.
This distinction should not be overlooked.
A former pupil could accept the disciplinary system while criticising a particular decision within it.
Thus the survey reveals not merely opinions for or against corporal punishment.
It reveals judgements about proportion.
And those judgements were made not only by teachers, but by the pupils themselves.
