Caned by the nuns

I attended an Irish Catholic primary school in the 1960s – all the teachers were nuns and discipline was strict – you could have heard a pin drop in that classroom at most times of the day, while we worked away in silence obediently.

Discipline was reinforced by the cane – or the ‘rod of correction’, as the sisters sometimes called it. This wasn’t the more common junior cane used on older children but a short version, barely a couple of feet long, although with the traditional curved handled. It was what I believe is usually known as a nursery cane, designed specifically for disciplining very young children.