One particularly interesting recollection dates back to a conversation in the 1960s.
A young woman working in Edinburgh was asked whether she had ever experienced the Scottish tawse during her schooldays. She replied that she had not, because she had actually been educated in England.
Her girls’ school did not use corporal punishment at all.
Her brother’s experience was rather different.
He attended a boarding school where corporal punishment remained part of the disciplinary system. According to his sister, his only personal experience of it came when his housemaster struck him on the bottom with a cricket bat.
Unfortunately, no description survives of the bat itself. We therefore do not know whether it was full-sized, a child’s cricket bat or one of the miniature varieties.
Another former pupil remembered cricket bats being used during PE lessons.
At his school, the PE teacher normally relied upon a thick leather strap or a slipper. On a couple of occasions, however, boys misbehaving during a cricket match were punished with a cricket bat.
The contributor remembered being relieved that he managed to avoid receiving it himself.
Perhaps one of the most charmingly strange stories comes from a school reunion held some forty-five years after the pupils had left.
Their former PE teacher attended with his wife. By then he was in his late eighties, but his former pupils remembered him very well indeed.
So did they remember his distinctive disciplinary implement.
During their schooldays, the teacher had apparently possessed what they described as his trademark “sawn-off cricket bat”. Boys would be lined up in the gymnasium and punished with it.
At the reunion, his former pupils decided to commemorate this piece of school history by presenting him with a miniature sawn-off cricket bat.
They reminded him of those cold mornings in the gym when pupils had been ordered to bend over and touch their toes before receiving punishment.
The elderly teacher merely smiled.
“Can’t remember doing that,” he reportedly said.
His former pupils certainly could.
What is particularly interesting about this recollection is the absence of obvious bitterness. The contributor said that the teacher continued to command the respect of the former pupils attending the reunion.
Such memories demonstrate how complicated attitudes towards old-fashioned school discipline can be.
Some former pupils remember corporal punishment with anger or humiliation. Others treat it as an amusing relic of schooldays long gone. Some remember particular teachers with considerable affection despite having been punished by them.
Memory, of course, can soften experiences over the passing decades.
But the recollections also reveal just how individual school discipline could be.
There might be official rules concerning the cane or strap, yet certain teachers apparently developed their own traditions.
And nowhere was this individuality more apparent than in the school gymnasium.
