Teachers Drew Blood and Punched Kids to the Ground when I were a Lad

I have never appreciated teachers as much in my life as I do now, and all that is due to having to home teach during these exceptional times. Given the choice between having to do my own dental work, including extractions and root canals, and home schooling I’m pretty sure that I would choose the former.

Darwin has a fear of authority which I think makes him behave better at school. At home he gets too easily distracted and I’m simply not into transformational leadership where kids are concerned, and that’s partly to do how I was schooled. In comparison to nowadays things were more related to Victorian day schooling when I was at school. We still got the strap, affectionately known as the ‘black medicine’, if we were naughty in school, and that was from the age of 7 upwards. We didn’t have computers and physical punishment was rife. My friend Gary Gallagher got punched to the ground in the street by Mr Willoughby because he was laughing and Mr Bowman wouldn’t hesitate to throw the blackboard duster at pupils, even at their heads and sometimes drawing blood.

And I’m ashamed to have the feeling that ‘it didn’t do us any harm!’. Anyway, the summer holidays are nearly here and let’s hope that the world will have returned to some form of normality after it.