One former pupil who attended a mixed secondary school during the late 1960s and early 1970s remembered two PE masters in particular.
Corporal punishment, he recalled, seemed to occur during almost every lesson.
There always appeared to be some unfortunate boy touching his toes, bending over or positioned across the vaulting horse.
One of the PE masters favoured the plimsoll. According to the former pupil, it could be extremely painful.
The other teacher had something altogether more unusual.
He possessed a small cricket bat.
The pupil remembered it looking as though it had come from a child’s cricket set. It was approximately two feet long and had a distinctive red rubber grip running down the handle.
On one memorable occasion, the teacher ordered him to fetch the bat from the changing room.
That instruction alone must have produced a sinking feeling.
The boy returned with the bat and was told to join another pupil who was already bending across the vaulting horse.
Their offence had been throwing a medicine ball at one another.
Each received three strokes across the seat of his PE shorts.
The former pupil remembered gripping the bars of the vaulting horse and closing his eyes. What remained particularly vivid decades later was the sound of the bat echoing around the gymnasium as each stroke landed.
He managed, he recalled, to hold back his tears.
Afterwards, the effects remained noticeable during his next lesson, although the discomfort gradually faded.
The experience was particularly memorable because the cricket bat was so unusual.
Elsewhere in the school, the familiar disciplinary implements were the cane, plimsoll and strap. No other teacher apparently possessed anything resembling the PE master’s little bat.
The pupil compared it to the wooden paddles traditionally associated with some American schools.
He encountered the bat again.
On three further occasions he received three strokes with it. He also heard stories that boys guilty of more serious offences sometimes received six.
Whether all those playground reports were accurate is another matter. Schoolchildren have always been remarkably good at turning disciplinary stories into legend.
Nevertheless, there seems little reason to doubt the central recollection: this particular PE master owned a small cricket bat and used it for punishment.
The memory also illustrates the rather public nature of school discipline during that period.
Punishment in PE was particularly difficult to conceal. Changing rooms, playing fields and gymnasiums were communal environments. Other boys might be standing only a few feet away.
In a mixed school there could be another source of embarrassment.
The girls might be watching too.
And for some boys, that embarrassment remained far more memorable than the physical punishment itself.
