My girls went to a private school in Utah during the 1990s. The school catered for children from kindergarten through to 12th grade, and was a weird mix of mega-liberal and what you might call ‘Super Utah’.
Unusually, the school’s uniform was the same for both sexes – brown corduroy dungarees, a mustard yellow shirt, matching socks and brown buckled shoes. The uniform was meant to help let kids explore and be ‘free’.
That didn’t mean that conforming wasn’t expected of them. The school yard was full of wooden play equipment – but the punishment for playing on it before or after school hours was a spanking. So as I say, it was quite a unique mix of liberal and traditional.
I have a sexual interest in spanking, and because of that I never spanked the girls myself, nor did their stepdad. However, we were absolutely fine with the school warming their bottoms if they felt it was necessary, and I must confess that I loved hearing about any spankings at school.
Spanking there was by no means a last resort – in fact, with many of the teachers (who were known as instructors) it was the first. Spankings were never given without good reason, but they were frequent.
My eldest two girls were pretty well behaved but the younger two got into trouble quite often, and it was rare for a month to go by without one of them coming home and begging for comfort because their bottom had been smacked.
Most teachers used a thick wooden ruler across the seat of the child’s dungarees. It never left bruises but I would check my girls afterwards and they would usually still have a good pink bottom, even several hours after the chastisement had been applied.
If a child misbehaved, the teacher would take them into the corridor to be punished. Girls would be asked first if they were ‘on’. If they weren’t, they would be given between five and 10 good, healthy smacks across their backside.
If a girl was on her period, the punishment would be deferred, but would be written up on the corner of the blackboard to remind the teacher to ask the girl each succeeding day whether they were still ‘on’. Once they had finished, a good sore bottom quickly followed.
The school employed a ‘play instructor’ (a job title which sums up the dichotomy of the establishment perfectly), and she kept a paddle for disciplining her charges. Just two swats of this heavy wooden paddle would have the girls bawling and she never stopped at just two. She also paddled older kids – most teachers stopped using corporal punishment after kids reached 11, but she would happily paddle 18-year-olds who were already offended at having a ‘play instructor’ at all.
My youngest daughter got her last one from her at 17. She was a persistent uniform offender, rolling up her dungaree legs and leaving her shirt unbuttoned at the top. The school was insistent on ‘individuality’, so my daughter would argue that the uniform went against that. That argument never flew, and the play instructor had her stay after school, bent her over the desk and gave her eight good ones.
I should add that these experiences didn’t stop three of my four girls sending their own kids to the very same school (in the very same dungarees). My youngest has hers in public school – but I have to say that the other grandchildren are far better behaved, perhaps because of their paddlings.
Contributor: Maria