Mary Anne asked for advice in May 2009 about a “Serious situation at school”:

I’m 17 and a senior at a Christian high school in Georgia. Yesterday morning my car battery died when I was leaving for school. I ended up being two hours late because I had to wait for AAA to switch it out. I missed my first period math exam which now counts as zero. My test average just went from a 90 to 60, and I am an honors student.

Missed exams can only be made up if someone is out to a medical emergency with documentation. My teacher gave me a choice of taking the zero with an additional in school suspension next week or taking five swats with a paddle and an opportunity to retake the exam.

I am almost physically sick over this. I have never ever been in trouble before and never paddled. I haven’t told my parents because I am afraid that if I can’t go ahead with it and I have to take a zero it’s going to hurt my final GPA a lot. On the other hand I talked to someone who had been paddled by the same teacher and told me what happened to him.

He said that he had to meet with my math teacher in a conference room and that he was given a choice between taking his swats fully bent over the table with a 30 inch paddle and if he stood up that swat wouldn’t count. Or if he didn’t feel he would be able to stay in place he could have the teacher sit with one leg leaning on the table and have to bend over the teachers leg so that the teacher could hold him down. The upside is that my teacher used a smaller paddle with the second option probably because he can’t swing the big one so close. I am not exaggerating this.

I am sick over taking a zero and killing my GPA, but I am just as sick at the thought of being paddled. I have never been in trouble before, and I hate this teacher. He gave me the weekend to decide.

A girl’s father in the States believes in traditional discipline, according to his blog on 2 October:

I’m profoundly thankful that Katy goes to school where she does. It’s the school near to where her mother grew up, and the parents of her schoolmates are people that her mother grew up with… It’s as close as you’re going to get to the atmosphere back when I went to school thirty-odd years ago, when public education was a different – and in my opinion, altogether superior – animal than it is today.

It’s a school from which KatyBeth can graduate one day, walking the aisle with friends she’s known for fourteen years. The parents of those kids are simple people with simple values. They’re farmers, mechanics, loggers and pipeliners, with a healthy dose of teachers, cops and firemen. Most of them probably aren’t even college educated. Some may call them rednecks, but in my book that’s not such a bad thing.

And the kids they raise, for the most part, mind their parents, respect their elders, and say “Sir” and “Ma’am” a lot. The teenagers act like teenagers, yes, but rarely do their shenanigans involve anything that would attract the attention of the law. And since this town is rife with cops, more often than not the responding officer knows their folks, and knows that a word with Daddy carries more dire consequences than a night in jail…

As a parent, I support corporal punishment. I can count the number of times I’ve spanked Katy on one hand, and even a stern word and a slightly raised voice from me is all that’s necessary to reduce her to a quivering, sobbing wreck. But there are actions that she knows will merit a spanking, and her knowledge that I’m willing to spank her if necessary is a useful tool indeed…

And that’s just if I decide to be nice. If I want to get nasty, I’ll just tell The Ex. She’ll get medieval on her ass.

(From this free spanking gallery)

Another discussion on a parenting forum, where mothers respond to the question, “Who else is old enough to remember corporal punishment being used in schools?”:

PinkBubblesGoApe – “I’m 37, no idea if it really happened but rumors went round my tiny CofE school that 2 school terrors had been caned. Just the idea made us all sit up and behave for a while!!!”

Diedandgonetodevon -”I’m 28 and we had the cane or the ruler. Got whacked on the palm with the ruler once for talking in class. Was careful not to get caught again! The cane definitely made me more cautious of getting up to no good although I never heard of it actually being used on a girl in my school.”

MrsMuddle – “I am female and got the belt in Scotland. (For talking in an art exam!)”

LouLovesAeroplaneJelly – “I remember being caned by the nuns. On the backs of the knees too. Once was for having the wrong kind of pencil.”

Jellybrain – “All sorts at my convent boarding school(nuns are far from gentle). Sometimes we would be made to wait on the corridor at night by the matron for the house mistress to come in (usually a nun)… Once the mother superior was so shocked by my behaviour(i had spoken to some boys on the phone and they had written to me and a friend) that she said she would have to get in a priest to ‘ecsorcsize the devil from us’ before she would give us our punishment(the stick) which was actually quite funny.”

Fruitbeard – “Born in 1966. It was the cane at our senior school, given for stupid things like coming in with the wrong uniform… I did have my hand slapped once by my domestic science teacher as she thought I was about to take something out of the oven without oven gloves – I WAS wearing oven gloves and I was highly pissed off with her, especially as she didn’t apologise! (but she was a mental old bitch anyway)… And our entire brownie troop got our hands slapped by a ruler by Snowy Owl for playing leapfrog when we were supposed to be having ‘quiet time’ during a camp…”

SarahLondon1, who ‘went to a boarding school near Nottingham’ – “In middle school, I had the slipper from the deputy headmistress. 4 hard whacks whilst bending over her desk. That punishment was for getting 2 detentions in a week. Later that year, the same deputy head caned me for being truant from a lesson. The usual teacher was off and we had a supply teacher, so three of us decided to spend the lesson in the local park. Needless to say we all got found out and earned ourselves 6 strokes of the cane each. I think corporal punishment was banned shortly after that.”

BodenGroupie – “Cane was used a lot in my Catholic primary (not on me, I was an angel) and I remember the entire class being lined up against the wall while the teacher walked up and down the line with the cane until the culprit confessed. Unthinkable now. The sharp tongues of the nuns and secondary school caused even more pain!

And one longer one from Granny63:

“I’m 62 so the belt (strap or Lochgelly Tawse) was in daily use when I was at both primary and secondary school. Usual punishment was two strokes, one with right hand on top, second with left hand on top. I had this several times for misdemenours – being late, bringing algebra books on a geometary day and mainly for bad spelling – none of these beltings made the slightest difference to my behaviour since I was not late deliberatly (bus was full and did not stop), did my best but was never any good at spelling.

Maximum belting was six strokes… You did not tell your parents that you had had the belt and had to laugh it off among your peers, it was very shameful if you cried. Our lovely register teacher left the room and came back to a near riot. She took out her belt and said ‘Out here you, you and you and ANYONE ELSE WHO WAS TALKING’. All but two swots went out and she belted us all, about 30 of us, then she left the room in tears. I have never forgotten that.

Funnily enough some teachers were belters and some never did. Generally behaviour was better in the classrooms of the non-belters.”

They’ve been busy in the courts in Qatar, with two items from the Gulf Times in consecutive days – the first from 2 October:

A Pakistani man and a Filipina have been sentenced to a 100 lashes and deportation following their conviction for illicit relations. They had a child in August 2008. Police were informed by the hospital after finding out that the 34-year-old woman was unmarried, and the father of the child was the 21-year-old man who took her there.

The man said he would meet the Filipina in her friend’s house.

The two told the court that they were ready to marry and presented documents.The court said that the marriage, if it happened, “does not erase a prior crime and does not make it legal”.

And then the following day:

A Doha court sentenced a 38-year-old Filipino to one year imprisonment for maintaining illicit relations with a compatriot housemaid in her sponsor’s house on March 27 this year.

Following her confessions of the charges, in the interrogations and in the court room, the 36 year old woman was sentenced to 100 lashes, subject to medical fitness, as she was an ‘unmarried Muslim.’

The Doha court of first instance also ordered the deportation of the accused after the implementation the punishment.

The man, a municipal driver, told the interrogators that he knew his lover a month before their arrests and that she invited him to her sponsor’s house and facilitated his entry there.