Tawse Tawse The tawse, sometimes formerly spelled taws (the plural of Scots taw, a thong of a whip) is an implement used for corporal punishment. It was used for educational discipline, primarily in Scotland, but also in schools in the English cities of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Manchester and Walsall. A tawse consists of a strip of leather, with one end split into a number of tails. The thickness of the leather and the number of tails is variable. Many Scottish saddlers made tawses for local schoolmasters. The official name "tawse" was hardly ever used in conversation by either teachers or
Corporal punishment in the home includes forms, such as hitting with objects, that Baumrind terms "overly severe", and that the line between corporal punishment and abuse is necessarily arbitrary; according to Gershoff "the same dimensions that characterize 'normative' corporal punishment can, when taken to extremes, make hitting a child look much more like abuse than punishment". Another point of contention for Baumrind was the inclusion of studies using the Conflict Tactics Scale, which measures more severe forms of punishment in addition to spanking. According to Gershoff, the Conflict Tactics Scale is "the closest thing to a standard measure of corporal punishment". A 2012 study at