Any examination of corporal punishment must consider the different disciplinary traditions applied to boys and girls.
The subject is more complicated than the familiar assumption that boys were caned while girls escaped physical punishment.
Girls certainly received corporal punishment in a number of British schools.
The frequency, method and severity varied considerably between establishments. Some girls’ schools employed the slipper. Others used the cane. In mixed schools there might be different rules for boys and girls, while elsewhere essentially the same disciplinary system applied to both.
One account in the survey concerns a sixteen-year-old girl punished in 1982 following an argument with a science teacher and her refusal to attend detention.
According to her recollection, the punishment was administered by the headmaster in his office with two other members of staff present. She received eight strokes of the cane. She stated that she was the first girl to be caned at that particular school and remembered both herself and her parents as being unhappy about the decision.
Significantly, she did not regard the punishment as effective.
Another female contributor, describing a private English school, remembered receiving the cane on several occasions during her teenage years. Her final punishment followed an incident in which she was discovered in town with her boyfriend when she should have been engaged in English revision. She had previously received two warnings.
Her recollection was quite different. She regarded the school’s canings as effective without considering them brutal and expressed no lasting objection to having received them.
These contrasting accounts are valuable because they prevent us from imposing a single interpretation upon the evidence.
Reactions to Punishment
Discussion of corporal punishment often concentrates upon whether pupils cried.
This is a poor measurement of either severity or effectiveness.
A pupil’s outward reaction could be influenced by personality, pride, embarrassment and the presence of other children.
Among boys, there was frequently considerable pressure to appear unaffected.
Crying after a punishment might result in teasing from classmates. Consequently, a boy could attempt to remain silent not because the punishment was mild but because displaying pain carried its own social penalty.
Evidence from women suggests that similar pressures could operate among girls.
Some former pupils recalled a strong determination not to appear weaker than their companions. In group punishments, the behaviour of the first pupil could influence everyone who followed.
If the first child accepted the punishment without obvious distress, those waiting might feel compelled to do the same.
Corporal punishment therefore possessed a social dimension which extended beyond the teacher and pupil.
The audience mattered.
Public and Private Punishment
This is particularly apparent when comparing classroom punishment with punishment administered privately.
A slippering before a class deliberately exposed the offender to his or her peers. The embarrassment could be part of the penalty.
A formal caning in the head’s study was different.
Although another teacher might attend as a witness, the punishment itself could remain largely private. Nevertheless, other pupils often knew what was happening. A child summoned to the head’s office might return to the classroom under the observation of classmates who required little explanation.
Thus even supposedly private corporal punishment could possess a public reputation.
The distinction between boys’ and girls’ experiences cannot therefore be reduced simply to questions of physical strength or sensitivity.
School traditions, expectations about masculinity and femininity, peer pressure and individual temperament all affected the experience.
The evidence suggests above all that children reacted as individuals.
Some feared the cane greatly. Others treated it almost as an occupational hazard of school life. Some believed it corrected their behaviour. Others remembered only resentment.
That variety of response is one of the most important findings of the survey.
