There was a case recently where a young girl had marks on her arms and legs from where a teacher had caned her over a remark that she made about him. When I was at school, in Australia, we still had caning (I didn't ever get it) but it was for fairly serious offenses. I remember eight boys got it for flicking bits of orange peel through Biro cases, and two boys got it for writing a disgusting Christmas card to a girl with sexually explicit language in it. In high school, a number of boys got it for smoking. Under the Australian system, I found that there were three main types of people. Those of us who were terrified of the cane (like I was), those who only got it once or twice and never misbehaved again, and those, like one boy, who could have gotten it everyday and it wouldn't have made any difference. I remember with this one boy (another one of the eight who was caned for flicking orange peel through Biro cases) was caned for other things and one day, he came back and described it to the person sitting next to me.