A very crude approach would be to say “of all the women I’ve met, what proportion were caned at school”, with perhaps various caveats about age ranges, and use that to estimate the proportion of the population and therefore come up with a numerical answer.
Of course, there’s a great deal of uncertainty, but you could try to construct (say) a 95% confidence interval.
In any event, I could say for sure that at least three English women had been caned at school! And of course, it was pretty unlikely that the number was as few as three.
I can’t remember what my crude estimate was (and at the moment I can’t be bothered to look it up) but I have a feeling that it would have been tens of thousands.
Of course, this has no direct bearing on the question of whether the punishment was effective.
The second woman would not have offered a non-corporal punishment as an example.
I suppose we’ll never know for certain.
The real question, however, is whether boys would have reacted differently in the same circumstances.
In the first case, the woman clearly believed the punishment was unfair (We don’t know whether it was because we don’t know what caused her delay.
) How many boys would not have resented being caned (or otherwise punished) for a delay that they had no control over?
The second case is more difficult. Punishment was not undeserved, the question is more one of degree and “equivalences” or relative severity.
Would she, perhaps, have preferred a 3-hour Saturday detention or 500 lines? Possibly, but another woman might have really resented those punishments – I know I would have!
The real question, however, is whether boys would have reacted differently in the same circumstances.
In the first case, the woman clearly believed the punishment was unfair (We don’t know whether it was because we don’t know what caused her delay.)
How many boys would not have resented being caned (or otherwise punished) for a delay that they had no control over?
Does this raise a more general question about “attitudes to fairness”?
Unlike susceptibility to pain, “fairness” is a cultural concept.
Might it be the case that, in traditional households, boys were brought up to believe that the world was a rough-and-tumble place, and if you were dealt a bad hand then, well, tough; but that girls were taught much more about reciprocity and hence fairness? (Or, for that matter, vice versa?)
Boys are just as likely as girls to say “It’s not fair”, although they might differ on just what “it” is.
I accept that boys were brought up to expect to be treated harshly.
I don’t agree that girls were taught more about reciprocity and fairness.
On the contrary, many (most?) girls were brought up to expect preferential treatment, regardless of whether it was fair.
Boys were taught (or quickly learned) that, if they misbehaved, they would suffer punishment.
Girls were often taught (or learned) that, if they misbehaved, they’d again just be asked nicely not to do it again.
They just lived up to their expectations, whether they thought they were being treated fairly or didn’t enter into it, they were powerless to resist.
It was over quite a number of years, but a figure of around eighteen is all I can put a number to.
A conversation involving school days always generates a good conversation, and often a person’s misdemeanors and the consequences rise to the surface.
The general consensus was “They were strict but fair, I suppose I did deserve it being honest.”
I think Jenny sums it up by using the word fairness. Looking back with an open mind without bias if the punishment was fair both sexes usually wouldn’t feel resentment.
CP was an accepted method of punishment, whether you agree or not to its use.
As the women I was engaged in conversation with went to coeducational schools it follows punishments were dished out fairly irrespective of sex.
Returning for a moment to the difference between being caned and being given detention as prompting a remark that teachers have too much power, it seems to me that there is a significant difference between these two types of punishment.
A detention is, in a real sense, an anonymous punishment.
Certainly, it will have been imposed by an individual teacher, but that teacher probably will not be present during the detention; it will be whoever has drawn the short straw.
The resentment, if any, is likely to be diffuse.
A caning, on the other hand, is personal. If you’re going to resent the punishment, then the resentment will be directed at one specific individual. The one who, right now, is inflicting pain.
