Asking Your Teacher About Secret Corporal Punishment

You’re not a bad student, exactly – some of your teachers are rather fond of you, in fact – but your streak of cheeky rebelliousness occasionally lands you in hot water. One of your favourite schoolmasters has hinted that their last school might have responded to this behaviour quite differently – but what exactly are they getting at? It’s been playing on the edges of your mind for weeks, a burning curiosity, a growing intrigue.

Eventually, you work up the courage towards asking.

The cane, you learn, is not something to be trifled with. Your teacher talks you through how it was used, in their last school – how the Headmaster would sometimes beat boys right on the bare, how for lesser infractions a pupil might get a swift thrashing right there and then in front of all his classmates. Your teacher secretly quite enjoyed giving these punishments out, you suspect. They even kept their canes when they left.

You realise, now, what it is you want – what it is you’ve been hoping for all year with your flashes of mischief. But do you have the guts to ask for it?