No examination of school corporal punishment can avoid the importance of teacher discretion.
Rules could identify prohibited behaviour.
They could specify which members of staff possessed disciplinary authority.
But at the moment an offence occurred, an individual adult frequently had to decide what to do.
To Punish or Not to Punish
Two teachers could witness similar behaviour and respond differently.
One might issue a warning.
Another might impose detention.
A third might use the slipper.
This did not necessarily mean that school rules were meaningless.
It meant that discipline involved judgement.
The teacher considered the pupil, the circumstances and the seriousness of the behaviour.
Previous Behaviour
A pupil’s reputation could influence that judgement.
A normally reliable child committing a first offence might receive greater leniency.
A pupil repeatedly warned about the same behaviour might not.
This helps explain why apparently identical offences sometimes resulted in different punishments.
The survey questionnaire records the immediate offence, but it cannot always reconstruct the disciplinary history which preceded it.
Mood and Circumstance
There was also the human factor.
Teachers could become tired, irritated or frustrated.
One 1973 account describes an entire class being punished after becoming unruly.
The contributor believed that the teacher’s enthusiasm for the punishment diminished as she worked her way through the large group.
Whether his interpretation was correct cannot be established.
What matters is that pupils noticed such differences.
They judged not only the punishment but the manner in which it was administered.
Strict but Fair
Many former pupils distinguish between a strict teacher and an unfair one.
The strict teacher might punish firmly but consistently.
Pupils knew where they stood.
The unfair teacher was regarded differently.
Rules appeared unpredictable or punishment seemed disproportionate.
This distinction could determine whether discipline produced respect or resentment.
The Difficulty of Comparison
Teacher discretion creates a serious problem for statistical analysis.
Suppose two schools each record twenty canings.
The figures appear identical.
But in one school twenty serious offences may have occurred and every offender was punished.
In the other, fifty similar offences may have occurred and teachers chose to cane only twenty pupils.
The number alone tells us very little.
The Person Behind the System
Ultimately, corporal punishment was administered by people, not institutions in the abstract.
The cane itself made no decision.
Neither did the slipper.
The decisive factor was the teacher who chose whether to use it, when to use it and with what degree of severity.
For this reason, recollections so often centre upon individual masters and mistresses.
Pupils remembered their manner, reputation and sense of fairness.
School rules created the framework.
Teacher discretion determined how that framework operated from one classroom to the next.
