Teach Or Train?

Have you thought about the difference between teaching and training? Regardless of dictionary definitions, the two words have very different meanings, especially when it comes to our power exchanges. Teaching is part of a cooperative process called education. The student and teacher cooperate to transfer knowledge to the student.

Training doesn’t require active cooperation on the part of the trainee. It’s an imperative process. The trainee will do what he is being trained to perform. Success will be rewarded, failure punished. The trainer is in charge and can do what is necessary to assure the trainee performs as desired.

I can sign up for a course in creative writing. The teacher offers knowledge for me to consume. Mrs. Lion trains me to prepare the coffee pot every day. If I fail, I get punished. If I don’t learn the lesson in creative writing, I can get a bad grade, but I don’t actively suffer. You could argue that in most cases, this is a difference without a distinction. That’s only because many people are sloppy with language.

Most people have very few occasions where they are trained. Soldiers are trained. They have to succeed or get punished. That is an unusual situation. When Mrs. Lion makes a rule or corrects me, it is a training exercise. I don’t have to want the training. I have to accept it. If I fail to do what I am told, I get spanked. Yes, I initiated domestic discipline, but I don’t control it. I certainly don’t like being spanked. It’s painful. I get turned on by the idea of a spanking but get absolutely no sexual arousal out of the actual event. I’m always genuinely sorry I didn’t do as I was told when Mrs. Lion spanks me.

Speaking of the difference between teaching and training, was I taught to stay in position for a beating, or was I trained to do it? Either word seems to fit, but there is an important difference. I didn’t choose to learn to allow my bottom to be blistered. I had no choice. I was trained. A few years ago, Mrs. Lion did one of her “experiments” where she spanked me almost every night. The idea was for me to learn to stay in position for at least 300 swats. The training went on until I was able to do it, even when Mrs. Lion was making me yelp.

She wasn’t teaching me. She was training me. I didn’t learn as much as I was trained to stay. I had to do it and would suffer until I successfully stayed in position until she finished. I’m well trained now. I docilely get in position and stay until she tells me that I can get up.

I have mixed feelings about having to say that she “trained” me to do something. The implied submission is embarrassing. I wouldn’t want to tell people that I was spanked either. It feels fine to say that Mrs. Lion taught me something, but not that she trained me to do something. Come to think of it, I don’t remember her ever saying that she trained me to do something.

2 Comments

  1. I find it so sexy that the Mrs. “trained you” to stay put for your spankings, from both perspectives. Exciting to be the trainer, completely embarrassing to be the one being trained like that, and accepting your training. You should be embarrassed. I am literally chuckling at the thought of you being effectively trained like that. Oh, dear, poor Lion!

    I am hankering now to get my husband to train me in someway. Maybe train me to instantly strip, kneel on all fours, arch my back, and stick my bum up whenever he snaps his fingers. If I am just a little slow, or don’t present well enough, I will be spanked hard enough that next time I will instantly obey. Imagine then if he snaps his fingers with my sister in the room?!? Soooooo embarrassing! That feeds my kink.

    I enjoy the deliberate wordplay of writing something like “I was taught to never leave the cottage door off the latch again”. Where the “teaching” involved a long hard spanking across my husband’s knee. In the olden days, corporal punishment was accepted as part of the teaching process for children, but more accurately, as you say, they were “trained” to be obedient and pay attention, so the “teaching” could take place.

    In my case, the teaching aspect was just leaving the door off the latch, and then realizing what I had done and the impact, and potential impact. No other teaching required! My spanking was more along the lines of guilt expiation, self-punishment for having been so stupid, and, of course, feeding my kink. Maybe a bit of my husband expressing his frustration with me in a constructive way that paradoxically (given our kink) strengthens our relationship, rather than letting even slight resentments fester and build. As Jillian Keenan said, “twenty minutes of unpleasantness in exchange for a lifetime of masturbatory orgasms.”

    I just became aware of Jillian Keenan’s thoughts on our kink, and thoughts on how vanillas and spankos can bridge their differences.. wrote a blog on it just now. If you’re not aware of Jillian’s thought (you probably are!) it’s worth a read and a follow up for the both of you. She expresses things so well, things I had trouble putting into words (centering around how “spanko” is quite a distinct sexual orientation, which sounded silly on the surface, but the more I think about it…)

    1. Author

      I read your post and commented on it. I don’t see my comment on your blog. I think Jillian is amazingly articulate. She does a very good job presenting spanking in an open and fetish-free way. The problem with many writers on the subject is the focus on the actual mechanical aspect of spanking. It’s like the difference between mainstream fiction and porn. Jillian is literally the New York Times version of what we write about in our much-more-explicit blogs.

      It is embarrassing to admit that when Mrs. Lion brings out the spanking bench I present myself draped over it. I fully agree that in an educational setting, the training is to get the student to focus on his education. I understand Jillian’s comment that twenty minutes of spanking can provide a lifetime of masturbation. Of course, I can’t masturbate. That’s something I was trained to avoid. The training to not masturbate was accomplished by over three years of continuous wearing of a male chastity device. I’m not sure that spanking would have worked as well.

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