I was talking to KLS the other day about punishment back in school and she was slightly appalled by some of my stories. It seems she was never punished back in her school years, or perhaps was never bad enough to deserve punishment!
I’m not sure I was ever actually caned in school, although I vividly remember being in a room with the principle of my first school (St Pauls) while another child was caned. It was classic ‘back of the calves’ stuff, using a stick much like the one pictured. I remember him crying out, so I guess the teacher who did it really got him good. I don’t recall why I was there, or if he was a friend, or what he (or I, or any of the others there) had done.
A few years later, at a different school (St Josephs) , I was beaten by a nun. I think the crime was ‘talking in class’ (a skill I mastered at an early age) and I remember I had to put my hands palm down flat on a desk while she hit our knuckles sharply with a wet ruler. Why wet? Because she licked it first. I can remember it hurt intensely (she was basically hitting our bones wasn’t she?) and I probably vowed to myself at the time to speak more softly next time I spoke in class!
This was in the very late 70s, and caning didn’t seem an unusual punishment. It was dreaded though: the ‘nuclear’ option for students who presumably didn’t respond to other forms of discipline. But as I aged, it seemed to become less common and certainly by my teenage years was all-but-unheard of. I recall a debate in the media about the practice that led to it being ostracized and then banned, and a quick glance at Wikipedia shows me this happened in 1987, although the ban was repealed (!) two years later and the practice was legal again until ’95. I doubt many schools caned then though, since the public has shown such disapproval.
Now detention, that was a punishment that my high school embraced fully, and I was several times the recipient of the coloured-paper letter home informing my parents I would be staying late after school. Here’s a few of the reasons I can remember getting detention:
– For peer-pressuring another student to throw a tennis ball at a teacher. The ball hit him squarely in the face and we all got a weeks detention.
– For telling a teacher she had a big nose.
– For exposing photographic paper to sunlight to intentionally destroy it.
– For having a ‘clay fight’ in an art-room that resulted in clay being stuck to walls and ceiling.
I’m sure there were others!
Detention was always an intriguing affair. It never really bothered me much because it wasn’t very long (an hour) and it wasn’t very uncommon. Almost everyone I knew had been on detention at least once, and many of the times I got it so did my friends (exception: the nose comment). The actual ‘punishment’ differed depending on which teacher was unlucky enough to be supervising that day, and ranged from just sitting in a room silently (the most boring) to picking up rubbish around school (slightly interesting) to going across the street and getting fish and chips and then returning to watch Pretty Woman in the A/V room (I kid you not)!
One of my friends (PM) used to save his detention letters and would proudly show them off. When given a weeks detention once during a class he boldly told the teacher he wouldn”t care even if she give him a year’s detention. So she did! This was big news in the playground in those days, but I think his parents complained and he ended up with the original week.
In my final school (SFX) if detention existed I was not aware of it, and caning was certainly not done there. Discipline was most definitely a thing (and one I was slightly involved in while I was captain), but I think it was a bit more progressive than beatings and incarcerations. Next time I’m in Oz, I’ll ask my friend KB (who works at that school now) how they punish the miscreants in the 21st century!
So were you ever detained or beaten at school? Do you remember why?
