Happy Christmas everyone!

 And remember, there are good old traditional ways of dealing with the naughty list...

...however long that list might be!

Hypothetical dilemma (2)

Last month I posted a hypothetical dilemma for you and thought you might like another one.

The year is 1962. You've just been appointed as headmaster in a traditional British Grammar school that employs the use of corporal punishment "for serious and repeated bad behaviour" and now you're meeting with the Deputy Head to get up to speed on how things run in the school currently. The subject of corporal punishment has just come up. Apparently many of the teachers use a plimsoll to enforce classroom discipline and that is generally just allowed to carry on in a fairly unregulated fashion. However what is really meant by "corporal punishment" is formal caning in the privacy of the office of the headmaster or deputy. Canings are never given in view of other pupils unless two or more are being caned at the same time for the same offence. Canings are typically for smoking, bullying, fighting, theft, petty vandalism and truancy, but there is also a rule that any pupil who gets an after-school detention three times in one term will also be subject to caning.

The deputy head expresses his view that this is sometimes a nuisance - for example, in the final week of the previous term no less than seven pupils clocked up a third detention - because they were all in different classes he had to arrange for each of them to be brought his office to be caned at different times and it had taken a big chunk of his time. His suggestion is that the system should be tweaked and that those earning a caning under the three-detentions rule could be caned during the detention even 'though others would be present. The idea seems to have some merits and it might act as a handy deterrent to those already on a second detention.

You're inclined to give it a go. So your decision is either...

1. When one or more of the pupils are there for a third detention, the person supervising the detention checks all the names at the start of the detention and informs the guilty parties that they are going to be caned at the end of the detention - in theory they would know that anyway, but having any hope dashed would mean them having to sit throughout the detention period knowing what was coming to them shortly and would mean they had no time to recover their composure before going home. One of you would then turn up in the last five minutes or so and cane all of those deserving.
2. One of you arrives at the start of the detention, with the cane. As soon as the register is completed those due to be caned would be called forward and their canings delivered. They would then have to sit through the remainder of the detention in significant discomfort, watched by everyone else, and unable to rub their bottoms as they might wish.

Your decision?

Favourite for December

Winter makes us all think about getting warmed up and I'm pretty sure this young lady is about to experience a warming up that she'll remember but probably not really appreciate. She arrived at the office of the headmistress at exactly the time she was told and was brought inside. She's already had a lengthy lecture about her behaviour and how totally unacceptable it has been. She was just about to learn her fate when the headmistress took a phone call and had to leave "for a few minutes." But not before instructing her to stand facing the wall with her hands on her head and not to move - she could use the time to think over the folly of her poor choices. It would not go unnoticed by the girl that she was made to stand facing the wall exactly where the official school cane was hanging up.

She had never been caned before - never really been in trouble - and was very scared because of the tales that went around the school about Miss Meredith's legendary canings. She might get caned on her hands which she had been warned was excruciating because Miss Meredith made a point of hitting across the fingers - however there was less marking and it lasted a much shorter time. Or she might get caned across the bottom. She was told that Miss Meredith's technique then was to make you stand behind the big leather chair, and then bend over it and place your hands on the seat. Probably no girl in the school would be able to do that without their feet coming off the floor which left you in a very vulnerable position.

Some of the girls wore much shorter skirts than was really allowed and by that stage their panties would probably already be exposed. She had alway worn a very sensible and length-compliant skirt but once Miss Meredith had you in position and you couldn't do anything to stop it, she was reputed to whisk the hem off the skirt over on to your back to give her a perfect target. First time offenders could usually be expected to get four strokes but a couple of the more seasoned girls in her class, hearing what she was being reported for, said it was more than likely she'd get a classic "six of the best" - they may have just been trying to scare her but it had worked. If Miss Meredith did do that, there was general consent that she didn't hold back at all. Caning on the hands risked damaging a fragile bone so she had to be a bit restrained, but bottoms were fair game and she used all the strength of her renowned golf swing to drive the lesson home. Those who had experienced this sort of caning said it hurt more than anything they could have imagined and the marks lasted for a couple of weeks and sometimes longer.

She was, most definitely, feeling very remorseful right now, and was getting ever more panicked as the headmistress didn't seem to be returning anything like as soon as she'd suggested.