I grew up in the southeastern United States in the 60s and 70s. My math-science teacher in seventh grade was a young and attractive woman named Mrs Nielson. One day early in the year, the whole class became so noisy that Mrs Nielson told us all to come back after school. But the first football […]

When I was 11 years old I moved to a new school. My new teacher was called Miss Cawthorne. She was a tall, well-dressed lady who smelled sweetly of violets and kept a little bell on her desk by which to bring the class to attention. She was the first really strict teacher I had […]

I started to attend a local infants school, at the age of five, in 1951. I was generally well behaved but was occasionally shouted at for not paying attention. I never saw a boy smacked, although boys were sometimes threatened with it. One day, I was playing with my friend at break time but we […]

When I was really young, about five years old, I attended kindergarten at my neighbourhood public school. Now, I’m only 22 so it wasn’t like in the 50s or anything, and corporal punishment was no longer a sanctioned means of discipline for students. Nevertheless, my teacher Mrs Strickland – who had taught at the school […]

I grew up in Florida in the late 70s. At this point in time, spankings were not expected but still common. I was in the 6th grade and had never been spanked before. Our school had a small pool used for gym class. It was made perfectly clear that we could never use it without […]

The school cafeteria served the same frozen hamburger patty every day –only the name changed, to imply variety. One day we ate chopped steak, the next day chuck wagon steak, then pepper steak, western fried steak, chicken fried steak etc. Finally, a classmate of mine got fed up with the charade and pitched a hunk […]

I knew that if she called home, I’d get it for sure. My mom didn’t always spank but if someone else was the one to tell her we were in trouble, there was no avoiding the belt. She had many other methods of dealing with the little misbehaviours of her three boys but not if […]