Don't Tell Him Your Name, Pike!

[manzanita]

A lesser form of corporal punishment was still active during my primary school years. It was not uncommon for one to get a smack on the bottom for misbehaving - even female pupils got smacked by male staff. At times on bare skin as well. I shudder to think of the fall out today!

At secondary school there was a music teacher, Mr Streeter who was I suspect mentally unstable. When he let rip he would really let rip. The slightest bit of misdemeanour and he would rant and rave for the rest of the lesson, striding up and down like a soldier, throwing things... he was a real madman.

There was also Mrs Gallagher who when she got shouting in the maths block, all the other classes in the block had to stop because she was so loud nobody could ever hear their own lessons!

Mr Castle would go a glorious shade of red and you could hear him on the sports field, through closed windows like he was next to you. I'm surprised he didn't burst a blood vessel looking back!

I think I went to a very shouty secondary school

[Rob Houghton]

I think I went to a very shouty secondary school

I think mine was pretty similar!

But it was also very entertaining to be in lessons like that

[Petermax]

I mentioned before that there is one teacher who uses the ruler for the bad ones

Rulers? How lenient! Some of my teachers would use old plimsolls or blackboard compasses as weapons of mass punishment. I managed to avoid all of this except for one occasion when I got slapped hard across the face by my art teacher for having a mild disagreement with a fellow pupil. Rather harsh treatment of a 13 year old, and a very dodgy thing to do even back in 1979.

[Rob Houghton]

Our head teacher at secondary school had an old plimsoll hanging up in a prominent position on the back of his office door, though I never saw it used!

Our secondary teachers often used to throw the blackboard rubber across the room at misbehaving pupils, and quite often a heavy text-book would be slammed down rather hard onto the head of someone who wasnt paying attention. We always found these lessons scarily entertaining, and it could be quite a thrill to be going into a classroom helmed by one of the more 'old school' teachers. We certainly never held it against them at the time, thinking it was just every-day school life.

How times have changed!

[manzanita]

As much as the current school generation would be shrieking on about abuse of rights, I am actually chuckling at the book being banged on people's heads! To me, that was all part of being at school and yes, looking back I suppose it was a fun element of danger to the lessons!

The other thing that strikes me as different, is that if today's kids told their parents they got banged on the head with a book, the parent would be up in arms about assault. Mine would have been "Should have behaved yourself then"! Quite a difference!

The thing I find scary is the number of people who mention a "creepy" teacher in the paedophile sense. I can think of at least 3 at my school who had that creepiness. That seems scarily common...

[Moonraker]

The thing I find scary is the number of people who mention a "creepy" teacher in the paedophile sense. I can think of at least 3 at my school who had that creepiness. That seems scarily common...

Very scary, Manzy - but the same went in my school back in the sixties. Let's face it, if you're attracted unhealthily to children, and you get your kicks out of spanking them in their underwear, where's the best place to work? Certainly in the sixties it would be a secondary school. What I find even more terrible, that this is still possibly happening today.

[Petermax]

The thing I find scary is the number of people who mention a "creepy" teacher in the paedophile sense. I can think of at least 3 at my school who had that creepiness. That seems scarily common...

We had a couple of staff like that at my secondary school, one them was the Headmaster! He got arrested a few years later, and after the court case was given a grace and favour job with the local education authority!

[Julie2owlsdene]

My secondary school was for girls only, and so we had no male teachers. All our teachers seemed normal. Infant and junior school was different though, the teachers were pure bullies and I hated going every single day watching the pure violence that went on and that was the teachers

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven at Secondary School, we were all treating as normal people

[Boodi]

The only time I ever experienced physical punishment was in kindergarten, when, at the tender age of six, I was hit with a ruler across both hands for the crime of getting my sums wrong. That was very painful, and it did nothing for my ability in maths (which remained one of my worst subjects). I suppose most of my classmates had similar experiences, but strangely enough I don't remember. Afterwards the usual punishments were things like writing lines, being sent to stand outside the staff room door and detention. However, in secondary school we had a very brutal sports and PE teacher (female), who terrorized the class with verbal abuse and a mild form of physical abuse (pushing and shoving pupils around). Her reign of terror came to an end when one afternoon at PE class she forced a girl to jump over one of those items of gym equipment (I think it is called a horse...but I'm not sure...hope you know what I mean) and the girl (who only jumped because she was so terrified of the teacher) fell and broke her wrist. The teacher was so angry that she locked half the class into one of the store rooms where the gym equipment was stored when not in use and we remained there until another teacher came to find out where we were. Shortly after that the sports/PE teacher "disappeared" and a new (and "normal") teacher took her place....needless to say there was never any official comment on the part of the school....I cannot imagine such a thing happening today, there would be public outrage and uproar. But that was the early 1970s.

[Rob Houghton]

Writing lines was a real nuisance as a punishment. i remember having to write I think it was 200 lines once: 'I must not talk in class, I must not talk in class...' My friend and myself were kept in during dinner hour to write them, and when we'd finished the teacher took them off us and tore them up and put them straight in the bin

[Petermax]

The teacher was so angry that she locked half the class into one of the store rooms where the gym equipment was stored when not in use and we remained there until another teacher came to find out where we were.

In Britain it was usually the teachers who got locked in cupboards by the pupils. This happened to my Technical Drawing teacher, he was later rescued by the Deputy Head. I hasten to add that I was not present when this happened.

[Rob Houghton]

That reminded me of a maths supply teacher we had at secondary whilst our regular maths teacher was off having a baby. She was very thin, with what we considered to be very old fashioned-clothes (a tweed skirt, cardigan, large horn-rimmed glasses). She looked quite a bit like Olive Oil in 'Popeye' and had a great problem controlling us as a class.

She would wave her arms about and start to cry, pleading with us to behave ourselves and we would just become more and more rowdy It makes me embarrased to think of it now, even though I was one of the quieter ones and rarely joined in the fracas myself. I'm sure the poor woman was very nice, but we saw a chink in her armour and we took advantage of it.

After ten minutes or so she used to rush out of the room in tears and lock us into the classroom by ourselves, not returning until five or ten minutes before the bell. This happened several times, and we thought it was highly amusing! Luckily it wasnt long before our regular teacher (a very strict and much-respected Indian lady) came back and got us into order.

[Anita Bensoussane]

She looked quite a bit like Olive Oil in 'Popeye' and had a great problem controlling us as a class.

Wonder if her partner was a spinach-loving sailor?! To digress (as if we haven't already digressed from the original topic! ), I was quite surprised recently when I mentioned Popeye in a conversation and neither of my children knew who he was.

When I was in secondary school, we actually got up a petition to try to have our French teacher sacked! A few teachers had nicknames, eg. the Biology teacher who had a scrawny purple-red neck was called "Chicken Neck." Our Chemistry teacher looked as if he rarely washed his hair, and my friend and I drew a grid at the back of our books and recorded how greasy his hair was each lesson.

Anita

[Rob Houghton]

Our Chemistry teacher looked as if he rarely washed his hair, and my friend and I drew a grid at the back of our books and recorded how greasy his hair was each lesson.

Anita

Hope you did it as a proper controlled experiment!!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Well, I suppose it was Chemistry of sorts!