How is this for a jolt of hotness out of the blue? This post by Lazy Geisha talks about things completely unrelated to any spanking issues, but this part of it still gave us shivers,* insofar as it relates to our punishment kink:
How many times did we all hear it growing up? That ambiguous phrase levied against us by those in authority to let us know that the cigarette we’d just been caught smoking in the girl’s bathroom would forever be enshrined as a black mark against us on our ‘permanent record’. Though some of us were good girls with spotless permanent records, while others (bats eyelashes and looks around the room) have enough black marks checked off to qualify for frequent flyer miles to the gates of hell and back, twice.
So we all know now that they were just full of shit and no one bothered to look at our permanent records ever again, let alone have the faintest idea where such things might be kept. As a young teenage girl I often wondered if there was some kind of publisher’s clearinghouse of permanent records which could be accessed and used against me later on in life… like maybe when I applied for a mortgage the banker would open up the thick manila folder containing all of the indiscretions of a capricious youth only to discover that I sucked down a Newport in thirty seconds in the second stall of the east wing bathroom in between Biology II and Home Economics and got pinched by that dyke gym teacher who was always after us to take longer showers after running a few laps around the track.
In reality I was a very good girl (i.e. I never got caught). I would have been mortified to be thought of as anything but a very good girl (i.e. writing spanking porn under the desk in my history lesson could never, ever been discovered). That said, I don’t think there was a concept of a “permanent record” in my school, and it strikes me as incredibly creepy for just the reasons described above.
I couldn’t even fantacise about the threat relating to other people.
Somehow the concept of a Punishment Book doesn’t have the same undertone of overall creepiness. Maybe it’s that the record is made by date, rather than by name, and therefore serves more as a chronicle of school life than a KGB dossier.
Maybe it’s that there is no pretence of grudge-holding permanence. (You whispered in a lesson in the first grade! No graduation for you!)
Maybe it’s that it’s hard to imagine a threat of an entry in a Punishment Book being more alarming than the punishment itself.
How much nicer, then, is a fantasy of a new Headmaster, who singlehandedly bans any reference to the ridiculous “permanent record”, and teaches his staff that a proper punishment must be timely, appropriate, and effective enough that it doesn’t require any additional repercussions.
After a punishment comes forgiveness. In my inner school, anyway.
Funny how a fantasy school, a strict establishment though it may be, is a much nicer place to be than any school connected with reality.
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* Because reading sex blogs together on a Sunday morning and indulging in mutual shivering is what all couples do. Isn’t it?
After a punishment comes forgiveness, heh?? Spare a thought for your Winston Churchill. He was deleted from the school’s honour board (wasn’t it??) – just too much trouble….until, he became PM, and they decided they had better reinstate his name. If he hadn’t been elected though, his name would still be mud at that school!
Oh, real schools are on the whole really obnoxious! That’s why we need to retreat to fantasy land, you know
Haron,
This is a deeper answer than is needed here to the subject of schools, but if I don’t write an alternative view on it, who will?
The subject of schools is a BIG one in my family. It’s the very essence that our life revolves around. Schools don’t suck per se. Bad schools suck. Soviet school suck as we both know, and US public schools suck even more, that I can tell you by look at the blank expression in a lot of the public school kids’s eyes. I’ll tell you what the problem is, too. Too much TV, bad, highly processed food, and a complete murder of initiative and critical thinking.
So, the future is with the alternative education. A school where students are given the intiative and responsibility for fundraising and cleaning. A school which is small (think 60 students). A school where a few of the students are on the board. A school where the students thrive. A school where students and teachers are aware, connected with the land and the food they grow. Where they are motivated by academic challenge, compassion, community service, and the responsibility for the schools future – NOT fear and blunt ambition. A school that is a family and one of the centers of the community. That’s the kind of school I’ve seen here.
That said, I am all for Male teacher/female student dynamics when within the walls of my home, and the erotic tension it brings.
Oh my! Well thank you for the link and mention, but I hope you weren’t shivering too much on account of this! Much of this post was tongue-in-cheek, but growing up we did often hear about how the things we did wrong would forver be recorded on our “Permanent Record”
The joke is that there’s no such thing, really, or if there is, no one really bothers to care! 😆
I lead a kinky life as well, and have been known to enjoy a good spanking every now and again 😉 — but please don’t fret too much over this!
We have a ritual called Stay Naked Sunday around here, and I’m glad that my journal gave you both something to amuse you this morning!
Thanks and enjoy your spankings!
xoxo,
nina
Amber,
Speaking as a Social Worker in the United States who works with the adolescent population, I agree 100% with your post. Very well put. What we need is for people to make this happen! Unfortunately we live in a world where we celebrate the wrong people for the wrong reasons and the wrong issues far too often get neglected. If we don’t focus more on education, what happens to society?
Now, what we adults do in the privacy of our own homes…
Nina – any shivering is good shivering, so thanks for providing us with the excuse
Sadie – if I gave you a link to a school where that happens, will you promise to never, ever, tell anybody who we really are and where we live? I think you’d like it a whole lot. But discretion is very important to me. I can email it to you in private.
J. here started such school with his family 10 years ago – on the foundation of another Waldorf elementary school which had already been in place. He’s actually planning to write a book on education, and will describe that experience. He taught me that it reallly only takes one person with an idea and passion to get things going, right here, in your own immediate community.
And, yes, I think that “No Child Left Behind” is some of Bush’s worst ideas.
Nina – I couldn’t pull it off in the North up here. Not even at the hight of my arousal. LOL.
That said, I did once make J.’s lunch for the next day, wearing only an apron, following the birching which I received after I presented him with birch for the first time. I enjoyed displaying those new marks, I guess.
Amber: What a great thing J. has done starting such a school. We lived in the US for many years and I think we got lucky. Our town was very education-oriented and the kids only have good memories. My dear friend there who lost a son to drugs tells me I moved just in time. In a faraway country they are now at a English style traditional school, much loved by practically every boy who attends. The opportunities are there for the taking, and there is great breadth of experience. The price is that you must live according to their code – honesty, decency, all the old-fashioned standards. If you do something unacceptable, you’re out! I worry about that part of it. My son’s lifelong friend has just had that happen to him, and we feel a bit sick about it, although maybe we don’t know the full story. It’s the permanent record thing – the school embraces you for all your life if you do the right thing, but if you don’t….Part of me wonders if it wasn’t better when they did give you a thumping to set you straight and put you back on track…says she, who would fight like a lioness if they touched one hair on her child’s head!!!
Well, we here have something called a “care group” – what I believe is a proper way of school discipline (absolutely no CP), as well as restricted lunch (not going out of school) and I kind of want to share about that but I have to run to get J. If you are interested, I can share later. Please note, this is vanilla Amber speaking, so please, no kinky jokes.
Amber: Kinky jokes? Us?? Never! Yes I’d love you to share info re discipline at your school. If I don’t do some Christmas shopping soon though, things are going to be pretty grim….so I’ll read your thoughts tomorrow. Cheers.
Got mine done. Only bought stuff for J: A few of kinky toys, some of which you can observe on my blog, as well as new carhart pants, wine glasses set, a new shirt, and a bunch of stocking stuffer things – wine, Guinness. I tend to start back in October, you see. It’s easy to know what my husbands wants and needs.
Giving my canning (shoot, almost typed caning) – like jams and things and meat to family and relatives. Dried hot peppers on a string, a goose, Tom & Jerry mix, eggnog, things like that. Not buying any stuff for people this year, since they value the food I grow and make quite a bit more.
And I want a red ball gag for myself. That’s all I really want for Christmas.
Amber: Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is a red ball gag? I mean, I think I know but …..Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a pretty lace shirt, or a silver bracelet…no?…OK. I tried! Speaking of Christmas presents, I went to Borders to get various people books. Wandered into the Erotica section, just per chance, and noticed a novel titled ‘Obliged to Bend’ by B.A. Bradbury. James, a lifelong disciplinarian finds himself the ward of 3 young women…..Well, needless to say I am now the owner of said novel, and it is rather good. An excellent stocking stuffer for likeminded friends…..(PS I wish I were in publishing when in early January they are sitting around in a marketing meeting astounded at how many copies of ‘Obliged to Bend’ they sold in December.)
Oh, J. loves Borders, but we have to travel two hours to the state capital to get there.
“Obliged to Bend,” LOL, it’s a pretty good title.
A ball gag is a thing shaped as a ball which goes into a person’s mouth to keep that mouth, well, shut, but also in the “open” position. It straps around the head with a strap that it is attached to on both sides. It’s a common BDSM implement.
Now, Amber is not into BDSM, nor is Amber a sub or a slave per se or any of those things. Yet, it captured my imagination, and I want to wear it sometimes, be tied up and take a harder caning than I normally do, unable to move away or resist or even complain for that matter. That’s the ultimate purpose for me, really, and it also adds just the right touch of humiliation and submission. But I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe I won’t like it at all.
Anyway, a “care group” is a group of people who each student selects in the beginning of the year, who meets with the student in case the student is in some sort of trouble – fails to do work consistently, smokes pot before school, is being a jerk (pardon my language), etc. The group includes a peer student, the parent, a teacher mentor, and also I think always includes J. as the assistant principle, and the actual principle too. They meet and discuss the situation – why this is happening, what can be done about it, etc. Is it a problem within the family? Is it a learning difficulty? Is it psychological problem of some sort? Does the student get enough to eat? They try to establish the cause of the problem on the human level, you know. (It’s this human level that I believe is missing in so many schools and large institutions in general.) Community support is the key here. And it works for most people. That’s what vanilla Amber has to say on the subject of education and discipline.
Rob – I wanted to add as to whether there is something else I want – well, I by now I have more jewelry than the queen of Sheba and all the practical kitchen stuff I need. But I could also use a digital camera – no, not to take the pictures of gaged, bound, and caned Amber but to take the pictures of our most notable farm projects and, above all, my growing baby.
And no – I don’t imagine J. at Victoria’s Secret trying to get me something lacy. LOL. “We don’t have that in S, Sir. Would you like to try this one instead?”
Amber: All right then, the red gag ball it is! LOL I like the sound of the ‘care group’. We have peer suupport and I believe that info is gathered re ‘what else is going on with your life’ to explain this behaviour, but it isn’t as well put together as your care group. The same size of your school I think allows for wonderful pastoral care.
Yep, that’s J’s favorite song: humanly-scaled institutions, so you can interact on a human level.
In fact, J’s current project is starting a college in the area, which has so many resources but no interesting higher education schools. It’s been his dream since he was a freshman in college himself, and pretty much one of his current goals in life. So we’ll see what comes out of it.
Just to give you an example of humanly scaled college, the college he went to for 2 years before he transferred to the college I went to was all-male college with 25 students total, in the full isolation in the desert. His brother is going there now. Mind you, it’s not for everyone in terms of the style of life and education that comes with it, but it’s a very special place. We visited it last summer. What’s unique about it is that students run a lot of the school day to day things – they cook, clean, go to classess, obviously, run hiring and firing committee, disciplinary policies (don’t get all kinky here, please), and admissions process. It’s also on a cattle ranch, so they do lots of farming – milking a cow, making hay, stuff like that. The students are also not allowed to leave during the term.
So J. wants a college which would incorporate some of those features but be 4-year and co-ed. (Hope I didn’t bore you, Abel and Haron).
Not at all bored – quite fascinated, in fact! (Not nearly kinky enough for me, mind!!!)
Abel: You want kinky! Well why didn’t you just say so in the first place?? Remember the book I mentioned – Obliged to Bend, about Uncle James and the 3 wards?? – well, I am trying to get another copy for my husband’s friend – who addresses himself as ‘Uncle D….’. Pillow talk has revealed that ‘Uncle D….’, a confirmed bachelor, has had, how shall I say, ummm ‘intimate knowledge’ of 3 sisters, who all address him as ‘Uncle D….’. There is, in fact, a fourth sister, the youngest, who has recently come onto him. He is, he says, trying hard to avoid temptation, but I say, it is only a matter of time. The book is the perfect Christmas present for him, don’t you think??? (P.S. I wonder why I am never invited to their get together dinners????)
Amber wrote:
And, yes, I think that “No Child Left Behind” is some of Bush’s worst ideas
But wouldn’t we all love to go back to the Little House on the Prairie days when after a day of classroom mayhem no child’s behind was left?
I found out late in life, as a parent of a teenager, there IS NO FUCKING PERMANENT RECORD. At least not one that has any meaning. I inquired and learned it is a school record, not a school board record, and if someone like the Army or the FBI demanded to see the “permanent record” they would be given an account of what happened, and no one ever remembers that happening.
Ted
Hey, Ted, I am all for one-room school houses, where indeed no child was left behind.
And, just to make it slightly more exciting to Abel, let me tell you that, say, Hutterites (and I am sure the Amish as well), who still have one-room school houses, still use a strap in the classroom (I don’t know whatever else they use). In fact, my father-in-law (a Catholic) started out in a school like that, and CP was used when he was little. The schoolhouse is now a heritage place, though.
Also, one of my counsins with his wife started another school – an old fashioned Catholic school, where the boys wear ironed shirts, girls wear plaid skirts, and the third-graders learn Latin. And they get in trouble for saying rude things. There are nuns are among the teachers. Now, that’s not where my kids are going, let me tell you, since I am pretty sure that to the third grader Latin is of little use. It’s a challenging place.
You see, people coming out of strict Catholic schools and colleges are often well educated, but don’t seem to have whole lot of confidence in what they are doing and why, since nobody taught them how to use that hard-earned knowlege in the way that’s fulfilling. I may be generalizing some, but I saw a few examples. Even if it’s a fancy great books school.
I think if you wanna be a conservative Catholic and still fun to be around, that is possible, but it takes some flexibility of thinking, which I am sure traditional Catholic schools do not teach you. That’s why J. dropped out of a Catholic high school as a junior and started something else, I think. And he’s fun to be around, as you might know from my blog.
What do you think Haron, am I a fun Catholic to be around? And no fair commenting about my forgetting fridays in Lent. My whole trip to England I couldn’t figure out what time it was, yet alone what day! Stupid time change….
Bessie, sweetie, you’re the nicest possible Catholic to be around.
(Except I sometimes forget you’re a Catholic, but maybe that’s part of you being so much fun to be around!)
I was just thinking about Lent last night myself. Maybe Amber will give up spanking for the upcoming Lent ;)? It’s like giving up coffee, which I have one year, which was, well hard, to say the least.
I gave up coffee once… won’t be doing it again, but was proud of myself afterward. I know of a girl who gave up pleasure reading, I wonder if that is only limited to books….