In the 70s and 80s, corporal punishment was fairly often mentioned in newspapers. These stories were very interesting to those of us with a morbid fascination with punishments.
A couple I can remember:
There was a news item about an Irish comedian who said he was going to start telling English jokes. There was a quote where he said something like “You have to laugh about a country that lets teachers cane their kids bottoms, but can’t stand cruelty to animals.”
There was a news item about a boy who was being kept off school to avoid a whacking. The headmaster was going to slipper a group of boys for snowballing (after they head been told not to) and one of the boys refused to bend over. The journalist described it as “a plimsole beating” — obviously they didn’t think readers would no what was mean by “slippering”. There was a picture of the lad, with a caption saying “He won’t be whacked!” It said that he had watched all his friends bend over and take three whacks each, but when it came to his turn, he said “I wasn’t involved”. His dad said that he was all in favour of corporal punishment, but not for something as trivial as snowballing.
There was a news story about “kid’s lib” — really talking about young people’s legal rights (e.g did teachers have any right to confiscate property?) It said that corporal punishment was legal, and said “In some areas, you can be caned straight after the offence; in some areas you have to be given 24 hours notice”. Our school did have a rule that you had to have 24 hours notice for a detention (of more than a few minutes); the idea of being given notice that you were going to be caned seemed very strange.
Can anyone remember any other stories of this kind?