Canewell Ladies Academy
School Rules (revised 2006)
1. Admission
a. Girls are accepted for a three year finishing course designed to turn out well balanced, polite, obedient and demure young women.
b. Once admitted girls can only leave before their course is complete if they are expelled.
c. Girls must have reached their eighteenth birthday before they enter the school but not have reached their nineteenth birthday.
d. Girls must be exceedingly pretty at the least. Beautiful candidates will be given preference.
e. Girls must come from a home where parents are firm believers in corporal punishment and have applied their principles diligently.
f. Parents and girls must unreservedly accept the disciplinary regime at the school and will be expected to sign a contract to this effect. Failure to honor the contract will result in a civil action for damages.
g. Before being accepted into the school girls will be expected to attend an interview where they will show themselves by practical demonstration to be able and willing to accept the disciplinary regime. NB Girls attending the interview should be prepared to travel home standing.
2. School Uniform
a. The Canewell colors are crimson, blue, yellow and purple.
b. The uniform consists of gymslips, blouses, stockings, hat and tie.
c. Girls must wear their uniform at all times.
d. The only permitted underwear is white.
3. Discipline
a. The school is founded on the educational philosophy that girls are naturally willful and idle and need constant correction to restrain those natural tendencies. The most effective and efficient correction for such natural tendencies is corporal punishment. Because the natural tendencies have been given all too free a rein in recent years, zero tolerance is our watchword. Catch the little sins and the big ones will not be committed. Consequently, girls will be physically chastised for even minor infractions.
b. For reasons of health and safety, all punishments are to be administered on the bare bottom. It cannot be stressed to much that punishing without being able to see the stroke by stroke effect of the punishment is wildly irresponsible.
c. For corporal punishment to be effective it must be significant. Therefore, the minimum punishment which shall be administered is twelve strokes with any instrument or twenty five smacks with the hand.
d. Broad equality of punishment is essential to being able to judge its effectiveness. Consequently, to ensure a rough uniformity of punishment a beating should always be administered with (i) the full strength of the punisher and (ii) the authorized instrument of punishment. Following this regime will also remove any sense of resentment in girls who feel that some are more severely punished than others.
e. There is no maximum punishment but a girl whose bottom is not in a fit state for further punishment may have the punishment deferred until her bottom is in a fit state.
f. No girl's bottom is ever in such a state that it cannot be soundly hand spanked.
g. Where offenses have involved more than one girl the culprits are to be punished together.
h. Where a culprit cannot be found or where it is thought to be worthwhile for its own sake, group punishments may be administered. These may be of a particular group such as a team, a class, a dormitory, a year or the entire school.
i. Group punishments should as far as is practical be carried out communally. Where this is impractical, for example where the whole school is to be punished, efforts are to be made to punish as many girls together as possible and to administer punishments at the same time.
j. Group punishments may be ordered by any member of staff or a prefect.
k. The head girl may order a prefects' beating whereby each of the prefects beat a girl in turn.
l. At the discretion of the headmistress, or in her absence her deputy, girls may be beaten in front of the entire school. Girls will be strapped to a whipping horse for such punishment and left there for half an hour after their beating.
m. No beating before the school will ever be less than 50 strokes of either the Lochgelly tawse or very senior cane. .
n. Whipping girls will be appointed for each class, each year and the school. The function of these girls will be to take a punishment when a culprit cannot be found and there is not time to punish a class, year or the entire school.
o. Whipping girls will be chosen by lot at the beginning of each week.
4. The instruments of discipline
a. Hand.
b. Lochgelly tawse