Talk:Caning

Re: Judicial Use
This passage claims that caning was known to the French at one time as 'the English vice.' I know that the French once attached this label to homosexuality in general. I question whether it is accurate to use it specifically for caning, unless there is a source for that. Marty55 00:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Disturbed
I am worried by the inclusion of a weblink at the bottom of this entry to www.corpun.com. In my opinion this website glorifies the caning of children and sadism in general -- to the point of being pornographic. I refer you, in particular, to the commentary that runs alongside footage of a judicial caning in Malaysia.

New British legislation will bring websites like this one into a very grey legal area, if not ban them outright. [Unsigned and undated comment from 2007 or earlier]


 * Which legislation? twitter.com/YOMALSIDOROFF (talk) 19:45, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * That question has already been asked, over six years ago (see next item), and no reply was forthcoming. -- Alarics (talk) 05:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Reply to the above
I am the editor of www.corpun.com. My website does not "glorify the caning of children" or anyone else, and it also has nothing to do with sadism or pornography. As anyone can see who goes there, its purpose is to provide factual documentation about corporal punishment of various kinds. To take the example to which you refer, my page about judicial caning in Malaysia simply describes the context for a purely factual documentary video, it does not "glorify" the procedure, indeed it warns viewers that that particular material is not for the squeamish. I am not making a value judgement about it one way or the other. You may well personally disapprove of the fact that Malaysia does this but that cannot be a reason for censoring information about it.

What "new British legislation" are you talking about? Ffaarrrreellll 21:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Cane types and terminology
I think this whole section is a bit misleading. It talks about various different sorts of cane with names like "senior cane" and "reformatory cane" as though these had some standard or official meaning, but cites no sources for these rather sweeping claims. Wouldn't it be better just to say that a punishment cane can vary greatly in size from perhaps X cm long when typically used on small children, to Y cm long and Z cm thick when used judicially in Singapore or Malaysia?

I wonder if it is also worth stressing that the word "cane" in this (essentially British) context means something significantly different from what the word tends to mean in American English. A punishment cane is generally thin, swishy and flexible, typically of rattan; whereas in US usage the word mostly seems to refer to a thick, rigid stick as in "walking cane" or "(blind person's) white cane" (these things tend to be called "walking stick" and "white stick" in British English) and hence e.g. the confusion over the so-called "caning" of Senator Sumner, in which (so I understand) he was hit in the legs with a rigid walking stick simply as a physical assault rather than a punishment -- not really much at all to do with "caning" in the sense meant here.

I would also get rid of the BDSM references, which have nothing to do with corporal punishment. Ffaarrrreellll 22:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

i don't know if terms like 'junior cane' and 'reformatory cane' were ever used but is aw the regulations for corporal punishment at my state secondary school and they definitely stated that a smaller cane was to be used on younger boys and all girls and a larger cane could be used on the older boys  it would have been very natural to call these junior and senior canes   the book published by the teachers opposed to corporal punishement("caning: a last resort?") reprodued a flyer from a firm which made canes, which certaininly talked about junior, standard and senior models...89.243.19.32 21:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC) Beanokid

Link
Do people really think the external link of the video is necessary? I'm leaning towards no, but I'm open to being persuaded. WLU 16:19, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say the photo on the page is enough. The video seems like too much information, IMO. kawaputra torque 18:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Disagree. twitter.com/YOMALSIDOROFF (talk) 19:54, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Please see... the reason for merger is tivial. 222.225.124.80 09:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC).
 * Should it be merged with the page on corporal punishment? It is naturally a sub division of it surely?


 * No, CP is large enough in scope (and controversial!) while caning can also be ractices for other purposes, such as SM games Arcarius (talk) 07:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Famous men who mention getting the cane
I had started work on an edit and had been about to add some more references but see it had been deleted. No reason was given, but could be because I had not added references which is fair enough. Quite a few men mention having got the cane in autobiographies etc. Shane Warne did in a TV interview with Michael Parkinson. Shall put back up unless the anonymous editer strongly objects. Informed Owl (talk) 04:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl
 * Please do! Arcarius (talk) 07:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there is (for want of a better term) a conflict of interest here in that I posted the paragraph on the article on the first page. I would sugges though that rather than just remove it (as one anonymous poster and one named poster have done) that this be discussed on the talk page first.  Am not going to go putting markers or protections on here, but would suggest that discussion rather than unilateral removal might be the better way forward. Informed Owl (talk) 20:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl

As the corporal punishment was in widespread use in British schools until fairly recently a list of men who acknowledged getting the cane is potentially extremely large. We do not need this. PatGallacher (talk) 20:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * U are right: David Niven, Roald Dahl and Eric Blair have almost identical anecdotes about caning -- I think at least 2 of the 3 say that they still felt it occasionally years later. Perhaps no one who went to British schools avoided it in those days.--Jrm2007 (talk) 07:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

This article should be merged with the "Laws in Malaysia" and not with a page about a Prisons.Timothyngim (talk) 11:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Use in schools
This still needs tidying up. THe dates when it was abolished in the UK should be added - it was banned in state schools before it was in private (fee paying) schools as far as I am aware. Informed Owl (talk) 12:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl
 * All that information is now to be found at School corporal punishment. Alarics (talk) 20:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Famous people who were caned
I removed the "famous people"-section, but my removal was reverted by. Quite a lot of people in the world have been caned, quite a few of these are famous, why list a dozen of them chosen seemingly at random in this article? What sets these people out from other celebrities who were caned? As it stands, the section is an indiscriminate list, and Wikipedia is neither a directory, nor an indiscriminate collection of information. Any thoughts? Gabbe (talk) 13:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In the UK at least, almost everybody (male) above about age 45 was caned at school. That will include an awful lot of "famous people". So if we are going to do it properly, it will be a very long list. Alarics (talk) 16:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A list of "(famous) people who got caned" would, as said, be overly long, and not particularly informative or meaningful. However, some have made particular commentry on it (e.g. Roald Dahl mentioned it his autobiography, and in some of his novels, and always extremely negatively).  Would it be worth mentioning some of those? Iapetus (talk) 12:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * If we're talking about a separate list article, then a problem is that the criteria are either excessively inclusive and (as you say) tending towards a not particularly meaningful list of names ("List of people who were caned at school" containing a list of wikilinked names for absolutely anyone who can be reliably sourced to have been caned), or, using the more exclusive standard, unreasonably vague and awkward ("List of people who made particular commentary about being caned at school"? "List of authors who discuss corporal punishment in schools from a personal perspective"?)


 * The former, all-inclusive option, works well from a purely semantic perspective (the criteria for inclusion are clear). However, it is an odd thing to have a list of - I don't think we have a list of notable people who were educated at grammar schools, or notable people who were punished by detention or notable people who had compulsory school uniform at school.


 * Maybe it's better not to have a list at all, but instead to have sections in this article like "In fiction" and "Autobiographical descriptions". Dahl would need to be mentioned in both, with his mention in the first containing a secondary-sourced statement that it was based on his own experiences, and his mention in the second containing a secondary-sourced description of what his views on the topic were.


 * Such sections would of course be a magnet for spam-cruft (a huge number of novels, for example, that just happen to portray any of their characters as school-age children in former centuries and therefore include mention of caning which is not significant to the plot), so the fiction section would need firm rules that the sections would be only for fictional incidents whose significance was noted by secondary sources. Dahl, Charles Dickens, that film If..., I presume one or two others. Likewise the autobiographical section should not include statements where notable people just happen to mention it in a magazine interview or whatever (this is potentially a WP:BLP problem), but instead should limit itself to cases where the person's account is then mentioned as significant by secondary sources.


 * Not sure how to cover cases where multiple secondary sources discuss a notable person having suffered corporal punishment, but it's unclear whether the person has ever mentioned it themselves (e.g. Prince Charles?), as neither of the above two sections would cover it. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't need mentioning because in that case the person would never have offered any commentary on it. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this is all quite a bad idea. In any case, any such list or section would surely make more sense in the School corporal punishment article rather than this one. Why would we want to list people who have been caned, but not those who have been paddled or strapped? -- Alarics (talk) 10:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Malaysia
The article says that only men are caned in Malaysia. However, there is a possibility that this will change, or was never true - see Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno. Orthografer (talk) 15:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That case is a sentence of "light caning" by the religious courts, something quite different from judicial caning by the criminal courts. I have added a sentence to the article to clarify this. Alarics (talk) 16:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Caning in Bangladesh
The following section was removed because "Disproportionate to mention this one case out of all the millions of cases in different countrires":
 * In 2010, Sufia Begum, a woman in Bangladesh, was publicly caned for an alleged affair by a Muslim cleric and village woman applying Sharia law, in defiance of the Bagladeshi law. About one week later the victim was hospitalized and died four weeks later. While the family claims that the caning was the cause of her death, the police who arrested the two people who caned her indicate that it is not established that the caning was the cause of death.

Well, it may be "disproportionate" to mention a case (although I am not aware that there are millions of deaths), but I have not found any other information about caning taking place in Bangladesh (BD), did not know that caning was against the BD law (although WP has a footnote:" The above list (of countries that allow caning as a judicial punishment) does not include countries where a "blind eye" is sometimes turned to unofficial JCP by local tribes, authorities, etc. including Bangladesh..."), that caning nevertheless is still done under the Sharia law in BD, and that the BD government persecutes alleged perpetrators. All these issues are raised by the case and deserve to be heard. Does the section belong here, or should it be the start of a Caning in Bangladesh article (it is against the law), or filed under her name as her case has gained notariety? Just aside, I wonder what the mortality rate is for contemporary caning of women and men.Ekem (talk) 01:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no "mortality rate for contemporary caning". Caning isn't something from which people die. In the case to which you refer, the family is reported to have asserted that the woman's death was caused by her illicit punishment, but that has not been confirmed. I would oppose the idea of an article called "Caning in Bangladesh". There are "Caning in Singapore" and "Caning in Malaysia" articles because caning in those countries is an official punishment, a very specific and institutionalised procedure, and very heavily used. Bangladesh isn't a caning country, it just has some local village elders in rural areas who are out of control and operating beyond the law. Although the BBC put "caning" in the headline of its version of the news item, the word used in a fuller and more local version of the story is "whipping", see http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=182005&cid=2. According to that version, the woman was "whipped 40 times with 'Dorra' (local whip)". Earlier mentions of similar goings-on in Bangladesh, e.g. in the US State Department Human Rights reports, all appear to refer to "whipping" or "flogging", see http://www.corpun.com/rules.htm#bangladesh. This doesn't belong in the "Caning" article at all. -- Alarics (talk) 17:25, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "Village elders tied 10 canes together and beat her legs," police chief Azizul Haq Sarker said to the AFP." If it is one cane it is caning, if it is 10 canes it is whipping? Ekem (talk) 15:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That's right. "Caning" is with a single rattan cane. -- Alarics (talk) 18:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It's also worth bearing in mind that the "tied 10 canes together" wording used by AFP is probably the wrong use of the word, quite likely because of mistranslation into English. I should think it was probably just "10 sticks", or maybe 10 branches of a tree, which would make it more like birching than caning. -- Alarics (talk) 16:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Intro now clear, "single" cane.Ekem (talk) 03:35, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass influx of facts sourced to Mecurio - where to put it
I've been trying to locate some reliable sources about how exactly caning "works" in a British/Commonwealth educational context - how it is or was justified, why and when and how often it is or was given, who gives or gave it, the effects, and so on. Particularly looking at the 20th century, since many of us struggle to make much sense of the century before that (kids hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, etc).

Having found very little, I'm led to conclude that J Mecurio's "Caning - Educational Ritual" is one of the best sources we have, even if it's obviously far from the ideal source for Wikipedia. So I have a fair number of facts to add based on that source (while also needing to note the "facts" are in many cases limited to the narrow scope of the source).

There have been some comments before about putting material into this article when it might equally well go into the School corporal punishment article. I can see the sense in this. In a few instances, elements of Mecurio's conclusions are, in his mind, New Zealand-specific, and in those instances it makes sense to put those facts in the New Zealand section of the School corporal punishment article.

More widely, though, that other article seems better suited to being an overall summary as it is now, not to have a lot of extra detail. So for example, I look at the United Kingdom entry there, and I can't imagine that inserting more specific information about specific schools or different types of corporal punishments, or more history (there's lots!), would make it more readable or useful.

Caning (this article) is for whatever reason an almost uniquely British-and-Commonwealth institution, and therefore although many of the questions and observations of Mecurio (who, why, how, when,) are in theory relevant to the wider article on school corporal punishment, I think they add more here than there. (The same boy gets corporal punishment more than 300 separate times in one year - if that happened in modern-day USA, I think we would see a headline about it!)

I welcome comments on this choice of placing, or how to do it better any other way. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Despite the title of his book, what Mercurio is on about doesn't relate specifically to caning as opposed to strapping or paddling or slippering, it just happens that the cane was the implement used in New Zealand. He is not talking about the mechanical or technical details, he is talking about the _culture_ within a school and a community where corporal punishment was, at the time, socially accepted. There are still places where that is true (Singapore, Mississippi) and the implement used is incidental. I would prefer it to go in the School corporal punishment article. We also need, ideally, new articles called "Corporal punishment in the UK" and "Corporal punishment in the US" to cover the more place-specific aspects, and for that matter maybe also an article called "Corporal punishment in New Zealand", or maybe the putative UK article should also include the places like New Zealand and South Africa where the culture and practice in this particular respect was highly British. -- Alarics (talk) 12:34, 12 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The implement isn't entirely incidental, except perhaps in Mecurio's conclusions (which of course are intended to provide global insights, even though they regularly wander back to the ethos of the particular school and country). But you're right that other aspects are mostly given more weight throughout, and that some of it would fit in the School corporal punishment article.


 * I hadn't previously thought of additional separate articles, how about School corporal punishment in the United Kingdom, and same for other countries if enough sourced content can be found in each case? Such articles could treat the material according to coverage, for example a USA article would have more focus on 21st-century news coverage and modern views, while a UK article would have more focus on the historical aspects of the practice. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

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Suitablitiy of external links
Having a look at the description of the external links, shouldnt they be removed because of the depiction of real violence?--2003:72:4D1C:A100:786B:B78:1813:DA24 (talk) 14:19, 3 February 2018 (UTC)