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Sunday, 19 August 2012

Board Ruler

In The Junior School I attended (roughly age 8-11) there was one teacher who specialised in maths and whose favoured instrument of discipline was his blackboard ruler. Miscreants would be summoned to the front, told to bend over, and get a single swat with the big ruler across their behind.

At the time it was very affective in keeping me under control because I made extremely sure that I never found myself on the receiving end, although those that did seemed only slightly troubled by it.  One friend who got it said "it sort of tickled" - with the benefit of hindsight and the passage of years I appreciate it was really too unwieldy to do much more but I didn't work that out at the time.

Nevertheless, as it was a part of my personal history and journey, I was pretty pleased recently to be able to get hold of a similar implement.  For the curious it's just over one metre in length and weighs a little over 500g.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ah I remember those blackboard rulers well. None of my teachers ever used one though for that particular purpose. Junior school was cane on hand while the first two years at secondary were slipper on bum or cheesecutter with an ordinary ruler.
Old Tom