THE STRAP (and other schoolyard myths)

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Saskatchewan to abolish use of corporal punishment in schools
REGINA (CP) — The Saskatchewan government is eliminating corporal punishment in the province’s schools.
Learning Minister Andrew Thomson said the strap has rarely been used in recent years but the government believed it was important to remove it as an option.
“It reflects our renewed approach to making sure our schools are non-violent places and safe places for students,” he said Tuesday. “I think that’s an important message to send from the top down.”
In its January 2004 decision on Canada’s spanking law, the Supreme Court ruled that teachers could use reasonable force to secure compliance with instructions or to remove a child from a classroom but not as corporal punishment.
Thomson said new legislation will not prohibit actions necessary to maintain order in the school, prevent injury to students or prevent damage to property.
Saskatchewan is the sixth province to ban corporal punishment in schools.
The Children’s Advocate Office applauded the move as a positive step that shows how the province values its children.
Rod Gantefoer, the Opposition’s learning critic, said the Saskatchewan Party had not yet discussed the issue but he expected the change would be supported.
“I think it makes sense,” he said. “The Children’s Advocate has suggested that and I think it is time that that be implemented.”

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 14:16 (twenty years ago)

Uh, THE STRAP actually existed in my childhood. A kid in my homeroom got strapped - in front of the whole class, no less - by the principal. His crime? Defacing a textbook with four-letter words.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 14:32 (twenty years ago)

kids still got beat where I taught up until this school year.

― Miss Misery (thatgirl), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 14:42 (twenty years ago)

Wow.
In the several elementary schools I attended, it was always somebody's cousin's brother who got the strap. I never even saw the strap and between fifth and seventh grade, I spent A LOT of time in the principal's office.

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 14:45 (twenty years ago)

i got THE BELT when i was a kid - our teachers used it quite a lot

― zappi (joni), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 15:04 (twenty years ago)

I definitely saw the strapping in question. It was phased out a few years later.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

The Lutheran school I attended grades 2 thru 8 had paddling. Your parents had to sign a waiver saying it was OK to paddle you if you misbehaved. I don't remember any girls getting paddled, but I do remember one time several boys in my class got pulled into the principal's office and paddled (what they did I don't remember). I remember that this one tough dude, who was eventually expelled, was crying when I walked by on my way to the bathroom.

― rocknrolldetox (rocknrolldetox), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 15:56 (twenty years ago)

They had flogging in my school, with a cat o' nine tails and everything. It made me the man I am today.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)

I was drawn and quartered.

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 18:04 (twenty years ago)

http://www.thelondontanners.com/images/4-Tail-Tawse.jpg

As I went to a school in the Scottish borders I enjoyed the pleasure of the tawse a couple of times, boy did it sting. The myth we had was that if you placed a hair on your hand before we got belted it would draw blood and we could then sue the school, not that anyone ever did.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

People got whacked with rulers and cane switches all the time at my primary and high school. I have had a ruler over the hand myself once.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 28 April 2005 03:38 (twenty years ago)

My first-grade teacher used to pour pepper on the tongues of kids who talked during class. Even at six, I thought that was just awful.

― kirsten (kirsten), Thursday, 28 April 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

Also, when little boys were bad, she'd paint their fingernails blood red.
That was a weird school.

― kirsten (kirsten), Thursday, 28 April 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

yep we had the cane at our school. and my piano teacher, who was an elderly nun, used to rap me across the back of the knuckles with the side of a ruler when i fucked up my scales and arpeggios.

no red fingernails though... that IS a bit weird.

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 28 April 2005 03:55 (twenty years ago)

wow, i had no idea that went on so much so recently. it never happened at my school.

the fingernail painting is pretty cool, though.

― Maria (Maria), Thursday, 28 April 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

they banned corporal punishment here round about when i went to high school i think. so that would have been 1988/89 or thereabouts.

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 28 April 2005 04:05 (twenty years ago)

I remember in elementary school getting sent to the principal's office and seeing his "board of education". Probably just for show/intimidation, but corporal punishment was allowed in my district, at least back then. (A few years after seeing the "board of education", I came across the phrase "corporal punishment" in the school handbook and thought they had the right to kill us til my mom said no honey, that's capital punishment)

― ()ops (()()ps), Thursday, 28 April 2005 04:13 (twenty years ago)

i won't forget the daily paddling of one of my 4th grade classmates.

― msp (mspa), Thursday, 28 April 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

There was also a teacher at our school who if someone was chattering in his lesson would throw the blackboard duster (a lump of wood with some felt glued on) at their heads. He was a deadly shot and rarely missed.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:42 (twenty years ago)

I came across the phrase "corporal punishment" in the school handbook and thought they had the right to kill us til my mom said no honey, that's capital punishment

Hahah oops thats cute :D

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:52 (twenty years ago)

No comment for reasons wherein dwell shame and perversion.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:55 (twenty years ago)

We got spifflicated (held upside down over the bin and shaken a bit). Very occasionally, the rumour went round that somebody had got the slipper, but it was a rare thing. The head of my middle school had a cane hanging on the back of his door, but he never used it.

Anyway, the heathens in Saskatchewan are way behind - corporal punishment was banned in UK state schools in 1986 and the ban was extended to private schools in 1998.

― Madchen (Madchen), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:57 (twenty years ago)

Also, one of our teachers used the Blackboard Bomb - a bomb drawn on the blackboard with a very long fuse, part of which got rubbed out the naughtier we got, until it was very, very short and boy, did we have to watch it!

― Madchen (Madchen), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:58 (twenty years ago)

we had an ex-military headmaster, straight and hard as a ramrod (wait, what is a ramrod? is it straight?) who often utilised the cane and the slipper. would regularly strike pupils too. this was pre-1986, it all stopped when er.. it became illegal. seems so victorian now!

― debden, Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:03 (twenty years ago)

Held upside down over the bin and shaken a bit?

God, there were about a dozen teachers at my school I would have died to have them "punish" me like that! ;-)

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:05 (twenty years ago)

I was frequently belted, whacked with rulers & pointers, hit with flying dusters, etc. until I was about 11 or 12 (when they banned corporal punishment in the UK). Some of the teachers were sick fucks who enjoyed it way too much.

The "put a hair on your hand" myth was much discussed at our school, but I don't think anyone ever tried it.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:13 (twenty years ago)

Apparently we're even sicker in Texas as it wasn't banned in Dallas schools till this school year. And even then it's a temp. ban as the school board reviews the policy.

Supposedly only the principal was supposed to do it in the closed office after calling the parents. Puhlease. I would witness him line boys up in the hall way during passing period whose shirts were untucked and whomp them.

The head football coach was the best paddler though. His was a big purple wooden thing and my first year teaching he came to my room to see about three of his players who were giving me a hard time. He asked me to step out of the room and called them up in front of the class one at a time and whooped 'em.

― Miss Misery (thatgirl), Thursday, 28 April 2005 15:56 (twenty years ago)

I got caned a couple of times for not doing homework. The teacher who caned me didn't like me, so I got it extra hard. When I left school, me and a friend ripped the cane off from his office, and broke it into pieces :)

One of the PE teachers had a slipper he used to beat kids w/. He called is "sammy the slipper".

wtf

Obviously other kids had it worse - stoning, pressing, the rack etc.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 28 April 2005 16:30 (twenty years ago)

Well, we've got the Gay Marriage.

― Huk-L, Thursday, 28 April 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

Rather than the flying duster, our history teacher made you put the board duster in your mouth if you were caught talking. Once he caught two of us talking and we had to share it - one mouth round each end of a chalky lump of felt and wood. It's really difficult not to laugh when you are winking, blinking and wiggling noses at each other, even with a mouthful of probably carcinogenic chemicals (I have no idea what is actually in blackboard chalk, but it's really unpleasant).

My old geography teacher had a snooker cue that he sharpened to a point to use as a pointer. It also made a very effective javelin for spearing annoying children yapping at the back of the class, as a poor chap called Stuart once found out in a particularly gruesome manner during a third year geography class.

I was belted once, for jumping about on a trampette in the gym cupboard.

― ailsa (ailsa), Thursday, 28 April 2005 19:08 (twenty years ago)

chalk is really harmless actually.

I threw some erasers before.

― Miss Misery (thatgirl), Thursday, 28 April 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

Doc Reid threw chairs and test tubes and shouted at parents who parked in the wrong place when they were coming to see the school play. He called me a stupid cow for forgetting Hook's Law and my friend Yasmin a stupid p4k1. And yet, you go on friendsreunited and you'll find tons of people reminiscing about what a great teacher he was.

― Madchen (Madchen), Thursday, 28 April 2005 20:42 (twenty years ago)

I (age 6) had the ruler on knuckle treatment for not putting the previous subject's book in my desk when we started the next subject. And she didn't even tell us (there were 3-4 kids up front) what we had done wrong until after she whacked us. My brother (age 10) said his teacher (same school) ordered a boy to the front of the class and then to take off his boy scout uniform because he was a disgrace to it. She also used to backhand kids with her big ring. This was a Catholic school in Michigan in the 60s. It was our only year in Catholic schools, luckily, because our parents couldn't afford to send us all.

― nickn (nickn), Thursday, 28 April 2005 21:34 (twenty years ago)

there was a shortage of male teachers to teach football when I was 9, so the saturnine, sadistic Mrs Hill took over. She banned keeping score and allowed teams to use their hands if they felt like it. But if you were caught with your arm around another boy walking back from the fields after the match, you were both stood up in assembly and publicly excoriated for being 'charlies' hahaha i still hate her to this day

― debden, Friday, 29 April 2005 09:53 (twenty years ago)

My biology teacher would throw the chalk at me - not *at* me to hit me, because this was well after corporal punishment had been banned - but at my desk, to make a loud bang. The biology classroom wasn't big enough for the whole class, so some of us sat at the back of the room facing away from the teacher, which really wasn't a good recipe for getting us to pay attention.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 29 April 2005 10:20 (twenty years ago)

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