Here I have enlarged the picture, rotated it and turned up the brightness to make it easier to see the names and numbers. One student in this list got six swats, quite a few received only one, and the rest fall between those two extremes. A classic "hands on the desk" caning under way in a Malaysian secondary classroom in 2009. The teacher is taking careful aim at the boy's rear end. This, dated 2005, is from Concord High School in Arkansas. Neither the school district's CP policy nor the school's student handbook was on line at the time, so whether the school really used this paddle we do not know; obviously the picture was posed as a joke. The earlier item prompted a reader to send me this, just to show that such a position might not have been as unusual as I thought. The source and date are unknown, but from the look of it, I would say it predates colour photography, so the colour was probably added artificially. There also seems to be something a bit wrong with the perspective, but that might be because it was originally part of a stereoscopic double image for use in a 3-D viewer. I got paddled at school in almost every grade. I was a failure at controlling my impulses and also at getting away with anything. I hated the paddlings. I feared them. Yet, as an adult, I crave them.

Here we seem to be in a more ordinary kind of school than the above, but the use of a kendo sword is the same. However, the "hands on the wall" method is being used instead of the "bending over" position. The picture looks as if it may be more recent than those we know to be from Mr Watanabe's establishment. Formal CP seems to be very rare in ordinary schools in Japan these days, having been outlawed for more than 60 years, and it may be that this is a posed picture rather than "the real thing". In what is clearly an upper-class home, two servants hold down a miscreant youth on the settee while his mother, or perhaps it is a governess, punishes him with the birch. Painting on show at the Kaluga Art Museum.A student is held bending over the porch railings while two others wield wooden planks, and a third some other implement the nature of which is unclear. I think this is probably posed for a joke. It seems unlikely that such huge "paddles" would be used seriously. From Simmons College in Abilene, Texas, which dates the picture to 1892-1925 (it is now Hardin-Simmons University).

Picture of the Head Master's Room, thought to be taken between 1860 and 1880. The birch appears quite different in design from the ones shown in the present-day museum. The US flag notwithstanding, this is claimed to be a martial-arts lesson in Japan. We do not know whether this is a "real" punishment, or an initiation ceremony, or just a picture posed for fun.Claiming to be from Alberta in 1978, this picture is obviously posed but it has had appended to it a few lines from a punishment book (five strappings in three days) which may or may not be genuine. From an unknown secondary school in Malaysia comes this 2012 picture of a boy being caned across the seat of his trousers as he assumes the "hands on the wall" upright position.

For one thing, it would take some significant shift in the current teaching culture for this to happen, as there is a definite ‘liberal left’ bias in the profession now and many teachers today would, I am sure, refuse to administer it. Also, whether today’s children would accept such punishment as meekly as my charges did is another consideration! A young man bending to receive discipline at the Japan Bicycle Racing School in Shuzenji. Note the appreciative audience. See also these video clips.However, you must remember that in Scotland at least, those same teachers would have grown up seeing the belt administered in class pretty frequently, so I guess they just copied what they had witnessed (or indeed received) as children. An ancient English tradition, once common but now more or less extinct, partly because of ludicrous "political correctness" -- see this Sep 2004 news item. The intention was to impress on youngsters where the parish boundaries lay, each generation thus passing this knowledge down to the next. Later in the day they were working on rehearsals for a drama production and my colleague just stood there watching like she was supposed to when the sub asked her why she wasn’t in her costume and just standing around. She again tried to explain who she was, but the sub cut her off and told her to put on costume on now and quit wasting time or she was going to spank her and put it on her herself. She grabbed her arm, gave her swat, and told her to scoot. My colleague went into the room, but didn’t know what to do, she said she was very confused. She finally opened the door to confront the sub, but the sub marched in, grabbed her by the arm and sat down on a nearby table and pulled my colleague over her knee and started to spank her and give her this lecture about how she came to school late, has been nothing but trouble all day, and now won’t change clothes and she was tired of it and was going to teach her an old fashion lesson. After her spanking which she said was only about 10 swats, the sub started to pull her dress over her head. Feeling confused and defeated, she didn’t put up a fight. The sub took off her dress, took off her bra and made a comment that no 25 year old has breasts like this and that there is no point to lie to adults about her age that one day she’ll mature but she must learn to respect her elders, and held the leotard type costume for her to step into and she zipped her up. She gave her another swat and sent her outside with the other students to practice. Uses computer graphics software to view the same scene from different angles. Here the "bending over with hands on seat of chair" position is seen, as used by some Singapore schools; others require "hands on the desk" or "elbows on the desk", as seen in some of these video clips. Note: the clothing is not supposed to be correct. School uniform is compulsory in Singapore, and jeans are certainly not allowed.