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Ahh!! The power of a good headline, eh?!
Seems a great shame to me, as a parent, that we live in a day and age of media-fuelled "righteous public indignation" - that when a spirited teacher happens to carry out, in retrospect, a silly and harmless action, they are "hounded out of the county" like some sort of paedophile or pervert when the REALLY important question isn't even raised (or punitively dealt with)...
Why was a pupil at the school in possession of a mobile phone during lesson time?!
I can only wonder at what would have happened to teachers in my Boys' school when upholding discipline 1960's style - a science teacher who kept a baby's bottle, bib and bonnet for errant teenage pupils to wear whilst standing in the corner of the classroom as punishment, let alone use of the blackboard rubber and chalk as airborn methods of getting attention. Cane, ruler, blackboard teesquare, slipper and a slap round the head were all part of the armoury then but we didn't all end up being mass murderers as a result of such chastisement.
What did happen is that a far higher percentage of us learnt to read and write to a standard seemingly undreamt of by todays standards...a cursory glance at the "Finding Friends" forum in the Star gives an indication of how high the proportion of contributors is who can neither spell nor punctuate even the simplest of sentences - so much for the last 30 years of "non discipline" discipline and "progress".
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