The Strap

[Pontius Navigator]

Our daughters went, for a short time, to the last school in the country to cane girls.

In my junior school it was the trainee teachers, male, who through runners or chalk. I don't recall the real teachers doing it. Also ear clipping and head bashing.

At senior school, in one occasion I was 'given the benefit of the doubt' and got 6 strokes. Never worked that one out. For later transgressions there were two levels of punishment.

One was to accept punishment my the prefects, and the masters never knew, (yeah right), or by the masters. I don't know if Antony that opted for an official caning. The perfect one was no underpants, over a chair in the Squash Court, which was well away from official ears.

[om15]

I was subject to indiscriminate thrashings with canes and gym shoes at King Alfred's Grammar School in Wantage, it was part of the culture to be beaten thoroughly by prefects and masters for little or no reason, a sort of school tradition.
I later went to school in Dumfriesshire where punishment (with a leather strap) was only awarded if deserved, which seemed to be much more reasonable.
I have often thought of the contrast between the sadistic masters at school and the worldly RAF Corporals at Halton that could keep order without any physical abuse what so ever.
In general I don't favour progress very much, but the simple fact that the behaviour of those masters would result in lengthy custodial sentences in the nonces wing these days does show how society has moved on.

[Slasher]

We had prefects in our public school in Adelaide, but their job was to dob in transgressors directly to the principal. Prefects were always chosen by their pure arseholery and musclery. Fortunately with us all being poor most could be bribed with smokes or money, and precious copies of Playboy and/or Mayfair also did the trick.

[Undried Plum]

We had prefects in our public school in Adelaide, but their job was to dob in transgressors directly to the principal. Prefects were always chosen by their pure arseholery and musclery. Fortunately with us all being poor most could be bribed with smokes or money, and precious copies of Playboy and/or Mayfair also did the trick.

That's an education for life!

[Slasher]

That's an education for life!

The Playboys or the bribing?

[Undried Plum]

That's an education for life!

The Playboys or the bribing?

This bit...
We had prefects in our public school in Adelaide, but their job was to dob in transgressors directly to the principal. Prefects were always chosen by their pure arseholery and musclery. Fortunately with us all being poor most could be bribed with smokes or money, and precious copies of Playboy and/or Mayfair also did the trick.

It's not an 'either or' thing. It's the way things work.

I particularly liked his observation that: Prefects were always chosen by their pure arseholery and musclery.

As an escapee from a plum driery, I giggled at that one.

[Slasher]

Gotcha.

[4mastacker]

So most of you guys are ex-British Public School.

The only thing public about my school was the outdoor toilets. They had no roof and passengers on the upper deck of the buses that passed by the school had a grandstand view.

[G-CPTN]

Today I have been with my grandsons to Beamish Museum - where there are recreations of genuine 19th Century buildings, together with associated activities - one 'settlement' is based on 1913 (immediate pre-WWI) and the talks by the guiding staff were remarkably enlightening - particularly to my grandsons.
In several locations we got into discussion with various staff around their 60s, all of whom had stories to tell of their time at school and the physical abuse handed out to them by their teachers - and we certainly weren't talking public schools as most of the people were 'working class' from mining communities.
Even the females had tales of being attacked with thrown wooden board-rubbers - so it was obviously commonplace across a wide area (my home town was 30 miles from Beamish and in a different county).
It felt strange - but reassuring - that other children were being subjected to the same sort of behaviour as some on here have recounted.

[Thread Drift] As an aside (and something that I found interesting) was that the two World Wars in close succession interrupted the normal development of many artifacts and the population until 1950 relied on existing equipment that was still fit for purpose rather than constantly replacing things with the latest 'computerised' inventions as we seem to do today - make do and mend was more the maxim than the throwaway society which seems to predominate today. [/Thread Drift]

[FD2]

Jetex Jim:

State Schools - 'public schools' are private schools in Britain.

[Jetex Jim]

Jetex Jim:

State Schools - 'public schools' are private schools in Britain.

Thanks, I knew that.

The UK hasn't yet introduced tax payer funded buggery and beatings. (Although I suppose a few ex-RN types might be prepared to argue the point.)

[Magnus]

Except in Scotland where public schools are, well, public.

[Undried Plum]

My boarding school, which was the only co-ed one in Embra, was so **** public that they turned it into the national gallery of modern art!

It went bust in the early 1970s 'cos it was a private school, ie what in England they'd call a public school.

It was founded in the 1760s by a lawyer who bequeathed a bucket of money to edumacate the illegitimate offspring of the town's whores. It took half a hundred years for other lawyers to pick the endowment's legalese apart so that the offspring of enthusiastic amateurs could also be included.

[FD2]

Jetex Jim:
The UK hasn't yet introduced tax payer funded buggery and beatings.

Zis is sounding vehry strange. Is this a new enterprise 'Mutti' has started to make her new 'friends' feel at home? Maybe she should go the whole 'hog' and bring in the camels, step ladders or bricks etc. State schools, on the whole (ahem), tended to not have this on the curriculum. Bored boys at English public schools and Scottish private schools may have indulged, but I wouldn't know about that first hand, do you have personal experience? Most of the people I joined with at Dartmouth were educated at state schools in the four countries.

Magnus and Plum: I'd forgotten - I should have been on the ball with that for family reasons.

[Jetex Jim]

Jetex Jim:
The UK hasn't yet introduced tax payer funded buggery and beatings.

Zis is sounding vehry strange. Is this a new enterprise 'Mutti' has started to make her new 'friends' feel at home? Maybe she should go the whole 'hog' and bring in the camels, step ladders or bricks etc. State schools, on the whole (ahem), tended to not have this on the curriculum. Bored boys at English public schools and Scottish private schools may have indulged, but I wouldn't know about that first hand, do you have personal experience? Most of the people I joined with at Dartmouth were educated at state schools in the four countries.

Well FD2 you're a little cryptic for me. I'm just a comprehensive school lad from the Yorkshire Dales and all I know of English Public Schools I gleaned from reading this thread.

[G-CPTN]

all I know of English Public Schools I gleaned from reading this thread.

Did you not follow Billy Bunter and Tom Brown?

[FD2]

Jim: I think these experiences were from many years ago at schools in general and possibly not examples of the way things are today. Most of us received the cane/tawse or whatever and didn't end up being warped by it - indeed it gave us a very clear idea of what was/is acceptable behaviour and what isn't.
As for buggery in the Navy - it was looked on as being on a par with shagging the livestock on board but not as serious as stealing, mutiny etc. It's not obligatory, yet.

[FD2]

I should have mentioned in that post - some people experienced real savagery from people in trust and not just well controlled discipline and it's not surprising if they were permanently affected by it.

[Undried Plum]

As for buggery in the Navy - it was looked on as being on a par with shagging the livestock on board but not as serious as stealing, mutiny etc. It's not obligatory, yet.

Poking a pig's mouth is a bit ordinary in the cesspit from whence is syphoned the cream that they send to Cranditz/Sandhitz/Dartmouf etc.

[FD2]

As Manuel would say, “Que?”