Getting 'The Strap' at School

 Hi there

When I was a child - between the ages of eight and thirteen - I got strapped at school.  A lot.

I was a talker.  Still am.  I babble away contentedly to anyone.  On the bus.  In the theatre.  In cafes.  My friends roll their eyes and put up with me.  That's what friends are for....

My father got transferred a few times, so I went t o schools in and out of Wellington.  Here are the schools where I got strapped:

Newtown School, Wellington (attended twice)

Bell Block School, Taranaki

Central School, New Plymouth, Taranaki

Central School, Palmerston North

South Wellington Intermediate (attended twice)

Manukau Intermediate, Auckland...

...and then, mercifully, by the time I reached Wellington East Girls' College, we pupils were considered too mature to strap.  It was detention instead.  At South Wellington, I had received both the strap and detention; South Wellington's idea of 'detention' was sweeping the classroom floor after school...

Some children receiving the strap were so scared that after  the teacher told them to stretch their arm out to the side, palm up, the kids jerked their hand away at the last second. Because I was strapped almost every school day, I put on childish bravado as I walked up to take "the cuts', but it always hurt.

The strap was flat-looking, leather, and well-worn.  It would probably have been over twice the average width of a man's belt.  Once I was called out to take the strap when it wasn't me that was talking, and that truly rankled. I was so cowed by the teacher that I accepted  'the cuts'.

Children who rarely got the strap or, indeed, had never been strapped, took it really hard when they were called to the front.  The teacher would pull out his desk drawer and seemed to take forever to gather up the strap and march over to the wrong-doer. 

 I never sobbed after getting the strap because I was used to the sharp pain as the strap landed - thwack! - on my hand, but others sobbed their little hearts out.  Most kids massaged their hands through the rest of the lesson.  I only remember being strapped by male teachers.

Quite a few times extra-naughty children got two straps.  Out would go one hand - thwack! - and then out would go the other hand for yet another thwack!  Sometimes the teacher wasn't all that expert with the strap, missing the palm and scraping the strap across the fingers.

Looking back, I am horrified by how barbaric it all was...

above:  I had a hard hunt for photos on the web of The Strap as used by New Zealand schools in the 1950s.  Noone seemed to have taken photos of the thing; this photo of a pristine strap is the closest I could find.  Oh, sure, there are lots of pix of modern-day 'straps', but they are usually reserved for naughty pleasures in houses of ill repute, and they vary greatly from the school strap.  Our school straps were extremely worn.  I had no idea what the hand-hold of the strap looked like.  It could have been as the above.  Or not.