[Vella Gonzaga]

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school?​

Whack-o! (1956-60, 71-2) Credits:filmint.nu
​

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school back in the day? Whether you misbehaved or didn’t hand in your homework on time, the punishment was swift. I remember getting a couple of whacks with the ruler for being noisy in class! It sure taught us to stay on the good side of our teachers and be respectful. You’ll smile at the memory now, but I bet it wasn’t so funny back then! Did you have any similar experiences?

 

[Susan M Turner]

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school?

View attachment 12591
Whack-o! (1956-60, 71-2) Credits:filmint.nu
​

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school back in the day? Whether you misbehaved or didn’t hand in your homework on time, the punishment was swift. I remember getting a couple of whacks with the ruler for being noisy in class! It sure taught us to stay on the good side of our teachers and be respectful. You’ll smile at the memory now, but I bet it wasn’t so funny back then! Did you have any similar experiences?

I grew up in Brisbane in the 50's, and yes the principal did use the cane! In year 5 I had a sadistic male teacher who would also use a cane if your answers in Maths, Spelling or Writing were incorrect. He would also smoke all day in the classroom! In my primary schooling he was the only teacher I had that did. How on earth did he get away with that sadistic behaviour in that era? Parents never set foot in a school in the 50's and 60's. I am in my late 60's and am a retired primary school teacher.
Susan A.

 

[deecreighton1]

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school?

View attachment 12591
Whack-o! (1956-60, 71-2) Credits:filmint.nu
​

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school back in the day? Whether you misbehaved or didn’t hand in your homework on time, the punishment was swift. I remember getting a couple of whacks with the ruler for being noisy in class! It sure taught us to stay on the good side of our teachers and be respectful. You’ll smile at the memory now, but I bet it wasn’t so funny back then! Did you have any similar experiences?

Yes I did. I was 5 minutes late for scripture and I was given three hits across the back of the knees and it hurt like hell haha! Needless to say I tried not to be late again

 

[Rick62]

Hi, I’m my day I was a boarder at Saint Patrick’s College in Geraldton, we had this brother who would give us 10 maths questions first up, he would go around and give us a number, at the time we didn’t know what for but when we were told to go to the front of the class and tell the brother our number, we soon found out why. I got two wrong so I got the tee square across my arse and he’ll that hurt, can you imagine the surprise every one got……Rick

 

[LeslieD]

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school?

View attachment 12591
Whack-o! (1956-60, 71-2) Credits:filmint.nu
​

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school back in the day? Whether you misbehaved or didn’t hand in your homework on time, the punishment was swift. I remember getting a couple of whacks with the ruler for being noisy in class! It sure taught us to stay on the good side of our teachers and be respectful. You’ll smile at the memory now, but I bet it wasn’t so funny back then! Did you have any similar experiences?

I didn’t but got very close. Some of my teachers used the yardstick. Don’t know why but I was lucky but did spend a lot of time outside the headmaster’s office.

 

[PeakA]

Not the cane, but I did get the strap a few times in the 1950s. To complicate things the teacher was my Dad! He was a primary school teacher and during the 1950s up until the 1960s he was head teacher at a series of small, one or two teacher schools in rural Victoria.
He didn't want the other children to think he showed his own children any favouritism - in later years our Mum said he may have overdone it a bit.
I don't think it affected me in any particularly harmful way, but I think it is a good thing that method of 'disciplining' children is no longer accepted.

 

[Jethrotull]

Neither, we copped a 2 stripleather strap across both hands..6 Times.. hands were so swollen and sore, couldn’t pick up a pen for hours..

 

[skyce]

I had a nun in Grade 2 (1960's) who was sadistic and narcissitic and used her open hand, a ruler, or her favourite was her 1 inch cane. At least once a week she would take me to the cloakroom whether I had done something or not - there was no reason that I can ever recall. Unfortunately, I sat in the aisle that led to the classroom door and if she took someone else to this place, she would say 'and you can come too'. In her aged years, I heard that she was categorically stating that she never touched children. I still have the physical scars today. Physical assaults and abuse was rife up until about the 1970's.

 

[michaelcowan2]

I luckily managed to avoid the cane at secondary school growing up in the 60s, except on one occasion over an issue, and not entirely my fault, but annoying enough for the poor teacher to justify the punishment of '6 of the best'. I actually liked this teacher, and punishment for flicking fountain pen ink down a newly painted classroom wall aimed at my partner in crime, did me no harm not altering my respect for him.
Yes, I agree that some teachers took things to extreme, and possibly derived great sadistic pleasure from administering the corporal punishment. Fortunately, by the time I reached the 6th form, New Zealand had abolished it's use in schools, along with compulsory military training.

 

[Dis313730]

When I was in High School way back in 1948 four of us boys decided to take the afternoon off
When on the bus a man approached us and asked what school we went to
He turned out to be the local school inspector and marched us back to school where we had to bend over the headmasters desk and get four of the best on our backsides
Never bunked school ever again
Bernie

 

[William46]

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school?

View attachment 12591
Whack-o! (1956-60, 71-2) Credits:filmint.nu
​

Did you cop the cane or the ruler at school back in the day? Whether you misbehaved or didn’t hand in your homework on time, the punishment was swift. I remember getting a couple of whacks with the ruler for being noisy in class! It sure taught us to stay on the good side of our teachers and be respectful. You’ll smile at the memory now, but I bet it wasn’t so funny back then! Did you have any similar experiences?

 

[William46]

No but there was some that did every morning

 

[SirExton]

I can still remember the year 1960 in my second year class aged 6, in which a female primary school teacher in Hollins Head Street Methodist Primary School in Chorley, Lancashire, England. She called me out to the front of the class, to read from the blackboard. She had seen me lip syncing the words that she had written on the huge blackboard, along with the rest of my class mates. They were actually reading the words, I could not.

I stood there on the raised teacher desk platform, in front of the whole class. I was in sheer terror knowing I had lip sync’d the words, at nearly exactly the same time as the class. I had a very quick ear for picking up the sounds, my other class mates were saying! In my fright, I could not recite a single word and was stuttering in reply to her heated questions, regarding me mouthing the words along with the class!

The teacher in her frustrated rage and disappointment, thinking she had taught me to read, gave me a very hard slap, across my face on one side, then followed it with a good back hander, on the other side. The speed and force of this back hander nearly knocked me off the raised platform and into next week! When I got home from school that evening, I dare not tell my father and mother of the incident in class that day, or I would have gotten another one across the back of my head from my father! I was the eldest son and in his eyes, I was expected to do better. This was the 1960’s after all. Dyslexia was not well known back then!

 

[MHM]

For me, being caned at primary school was a regular, and deserved event. My friends and I believed that receiving four cuts of the cane was minimal and that six cuts was the true test of stoicism. The cane was always applied by an elderly headmaster who showed no sympathy in his administration (and nor should he).
Upon being elevated to high school I found that application of cane punishment was not by masters or administrators, but by 6th class prefects. Now they knew how to dish it out.

 

[Macarj]

Physical abuse never ultimately works

 

[Ronloby]

I remember in writing class if one particular lady teacher saw you not holding the pencil correctly or writing messy she would hit you on the knuckles with a ruler as you wrote. Not hard but just to let you know she was not happy. I ended up doing a calligraphy course later in life as I was interested in various forms of writing.

 

[SGH]

I remember getting the cane for doing nothing at all, there was a fuss being made around my desk and the teacher through me out of the classroom, which happened to be next to the principal's office. I got yelled at and one across the hand and sent back to the classroom in tears, I was 8 years old and I remember it well because it was my birthday.
On going to high school the teachers there were no better, there was a home science teacher who could hit you in the head from 30 feet with the blackboard duster and in practical classes would walk around with a dustpan brush and whack you across the back of the legs willy-nilly.
I didn't finish high school, I left in 3rd form, and I am so grateful I did, because I was never allowed to do any subjects that I wanted to do, and when I did adult education, I did exactly what I was interested in.

 

[MHM]

Physical abuse never ultimately works

Perhaps not, but I have never complained that it did me any harm. Some others, possibly.

 

[Jaolo]

I received the cane a few times but the one I remember the most was our woodwork teacher had a wooden bat and I received that on my bottom 6 times for shoving wood shavings down another kids shirt
That was about 71 years ago boy haven't times changed by

 

[Abinme]

Growing up in England we had a male teacher who bound 4 rulers together with rubber bands and hit the girls on the hand with it. The boys, he took his dirty old plimsoll off and wacked them with it across their bottoms. This was primarily school.