We think that schools now have become too soft and do youngsters no service.
Our school is in a country where corporal punishment is still very much allowed and we have created a school system much more like schools fifty years ago. It is a boarding school for boys aged eleven to eighteen. Our boys have parents who are very traditional in their views and believe that boys need to be trained to be tough, as well as educated.
Until they are fifteen, our boys wear a uniform of white cotton shorts and white shirts, with black ties carrying the school crest in red. They wear long khaki socks and brown sandals. Underwear is also prescribed - white y-front briefs changed daily.
The routine for daily laundry is that boys queue for the soiled linen room, enter four at a time, remove their clothes once in the room and hand them to the duty prefect, carry their sandals and shorts back into the corridor and walk next door to the clean linen room where they collect clean linen from the duty clean linen prefect and carry all their clothes back to their dormitories where they dress. This happens each morning.
Corporal punishment may be administered by masters or prefects. It happens in classrooms, dormitories, housemasters' studies, prefects' studies, the headmaster's study and in school assemblies.
Classroom punishment is administered at the front of the class, touching toes, normally with a slipper. Boys are fully clothed for this punishment, which is really a type of first warning.
Dorm punishment is administered by dormitory prefects. It is customary for the boy to bend over the end of bedstead. Other boys may gather round and watch quietly. The boy being punished has to face the other boys and remove his pajama bottoms, before turning round and bending over. He receives 3-6 strokes of a broad leather dormitory strap.
Our housemasters spank the youngest boys over the knee but use a paddle for boys from thirteen. A prefect is always there to witness the punishment, as well as another boy in the form of the boy who is being punished. We involve another boy in the form, both to embarrass his classmate and to ensure that the story of the beating gets back to other boys in the class. In our form period each morning, the witness has to stand up and describe how the boy was punished and how he reacted. The makes the boy who was punished really squirm with embarrassment.
A boy being punished by the housemaster has to go to his dormitory and undress to sandals and underpants. He stands outside the housemaster's study, hands on head, for twenty minutes. Then he is called in. He has to remove his sandals and leave them outside. Once in the room, he stands before the housemaster's desk, hands on head. The prefect lowers his underpants so they rest just beneath his testicles and he must again stand with hands on head. The housemaster then leectures him, finally telling him to remove his underpants and give them to his classmate. He has to stretch across the desk, feet wide and he is paddled until his bottom is bright red. Or he goes across the knee.
The Headmaster's punishments in his study are the same as those of housemasters, except that a cane is used.
Assembly punishments are also performed by the Headmaster, on a raised stage in front of all the boys. The boy to be punished has to remove all his clothes in front of the assembly and then stand naked, hands on head whilst the headmaster rebukes him. The Senior Prefect then brings a punishment block specially made in our technology department onto the stage. The boy has to kneel on this, knees wide, head down, bottom facing the assembly. He is caned.
The practice of our prefects is varied, though they may not use the cane. We do not interfere with this and the younger boys never complain. They are used to firm treatment at home anyway.