Express India reports –
New Delhi, August 18: A teacher stabbed a pencil into the head of a four-year-old after she caught him sleeping. An incision had to be made to remove a piece of lead from the boy’s head.…The incident occurred when class teacher Kalpana Kumari found Anas, a student of Prep I, napping in class. She snatched his pencil and hit him on the head.
This passage brings to mind Maoist Chinese justice where the family of the condemned is charged for the bullet used to execute him –
…The family of the boy alleged that Green Field Convent School did not even provide first aid. Anas, the victim, lives with his aunt as his parents are at Moradabad.
SUE SUE SUE SUEY SUE SUE NOW! OMG! KA-CHING!
For all of India’s vast technological improvements, it’s amazing the 21st century still hasn’t hit some people. =/
Ah, good times.
Brings back fond memories of the time my 4th grade teacher spotted me whispering in class to the kid next to me. Furious, she picked up a cookie tin filled with chalk off her desk and threw it at the back of my head (teacher sat in the back, facing the same direction we did), but luckily for me, I bent down to get something out of my bag just then.
Cookie tin flew over my desk and nailed the girl who sat in front of me. I clearly remeber the teacher hugging that wailing girl while screaming “look at what you made me do!!!” at me. Good times.
/sarcasm>
Furious, she picked up a cookie tin filled with chalk off her desk and threw it at the back of my head
What did your parents say and do ?
I didn’t even bother telling them about it AMfD. I’d come home with too many stories of actually being hit (with a ruler, most often, but whatever was nearest a teacher’s hand generally), made to kneel outside the classroom for hours so people passing by could stare, etc. And my parents, typically would say that I must have done something wrong to deserve being punished like that. Or, that it was nothing compared to how their teachers had punished them, back in the day.
The funniest past is that I was such a goody two-shoes! Always did my homework, aced every test, etc.
I went to a pretty nice (according to family) public school back in Bangladesh. When my teacher (1st grade) hit me with a ruler, I told my dad and SHE had to apologize to ME!!! This notebook of mine had fallen out the window accidentally, and she thought I threw it.
—EMMA 😉
My 5th grade Math teacher beat with a bamboo stick till I peed myself. The embarssement was too much to deal with for a 10 year old. Must repress bad memories..
My fourth grade teacher at St. Anne’s School in Delhi actually had the entire class line up so each of us could be hit with a tennis racket- she saved the hardest swing for me– I was a back talker!
On a healthy note..bid adieu to a good teacher.
That ain’t nuttin. I lived in Kuwait for 3 years and went to two Indian private schools. Let me tell you all something: arabic teachers in an Indian school are a pain in the ass. I once had a teacher that had a mini rubber whip (piece of rubber lining one finds along the edges of glass windows) and let’s just say he showed me how far corporal punishment goes in the 2nd grade.
eeeks Arabic trs had to be the worst I agree.
Our Arabic trs were so lazy, they’d throw pieces of chalk at those random backbenchers who’d dare to whisper.
“yalla yalla what you to be doing ?yalla hayavanat”
Heh Sandeep I know what u mean. My Arabic teacher in grade 8, who was this huge overweight lady around 6′ tall, used to hit a guy with all her force on the back, pretty much on the spinal chord.
When I was in second grade, my “Miss” caught me chewing gum in class – she promptly made me take it out of my mouth and stick it on my head. And to ensure good adhesion, she used a handkerchief and kind of massaged it into my head.
When I went home (after 4 hours or so), the damage had been done. My mom tried shampoo, soap, detergent, and kerosene to get it out, but it was a stubborn type of gum, so we had to go to a barber and get him to cut it out.
My furious dad complained to the principal – so the next time someone was caught eating gum in class, she made him stick it on his forehead.
Jeez! you guys had some horrific, scarring teachers!
I remember getting called to the principal’s office, around 3rd or 4th grade. Of course I’d done something… and this principal was known for keeping a frat paddle in his office and paddling kids. Sensing a paddling was emminent, I burst into tears and said that the girl on the playground called me a dot-head. (this was middle-America, and thus a highly plausible story) A few tears later, and I walked out scot-free… 😀
DesiDancer, what the freak? In Middle-America? Paddle?
I lived in Kuwait too, and there was this one Indian teacher who, when you didnt do good on the tests, would call you to her table, tell you to put your hand on the table (palms down), and then wielding a thick wooden ruler like a cleaver, proceed to hit you as hard as she could on your finger joints. It seemed like she was trying to sever the fingers. I was a wee little kid and geting hit by teachers, parents..etc wasnt a big deal, but this was too much.
Am I the only one on this board who had an incredibly happy 12 years of school? (and in a Jesuit school, no less)
Back home in SA we had this teacher, Mr Chinnia, he would pinch our cheeks and make us recite the time tables! I think Math has been traumatic since……
Corporal punishment is a hand-me-down behaviour from out colonial past. The British had perfected this method of discipline in their schools from the middle of the last millennium.
If the bluecoat boys can be said to be chastised with whips, boys at the public schools to which the sons of ‘the upper ten thousand’ are sent, are tormented by scorpions.
Traditional gurukulas of yore, and even islamic madarsas of the sub-continent did not use corporal punishment.
In was only in the 1960’s that Britain moved against this.
Like many other post-colonial behaviours, we sepoys need to mutiny against this as well.
M. Nam
Mathematiker,
I went to a Jesuit high school for 3 years and learned more there than I ever did in college. Brilliant educational philosophy. Big ups to the Society of Jesus 😉
Corporal punishment is, of course, bad…and some teachers (from the stories here) were clearly sadistic….but is it so wrong that my fingers itch the slap the crap out of some of these unbelievably bratty kids who throw produce around in the grocery store and turn purple screaming for candy? Those Nanny 911 shows make me want to get myself sterilized. what’s the word these days? Is spanking a total no-no?
Corporal punishment is, of course, bad…and some teachers (from the stories here) were clearly sadistic….but is it so wrong that my fingers itch the slap the crap out of some of these unbelievably bratty kids who throw produce around in the grocery store and turn purple screaming for candy?
Grew up in suburban Detroit, teachers never hit. I was a serious hellraiser, just had a wild streak in me and other issues (i was kind of a mess), and in 7th grade, I wasn’t following along during oral reading, and when it came to my turn, i would crack a joke or do something dumb to get out of it. As class ended, the teacher came up to me and yelled at me for my behavior, and I just blew her off and started laughing. This lady, about late 50’s, flipped out, threw me on the desk face first and proceeded to hammer me in the back w/ several punches. I didn’t make things better by laughing this whole time. Never told my parents, and now when I look at it, I’m glad she did it bcuz I should’ve been disciplined.
Adults nowadays spoil kids way too much and kids feel way too empowered to do as they please. My dad’s sufficient beatings he gave me let me know that there was a price to pay for ridiculous behavior, I’m glad he did it, bcuz I was headed down the wrong path fast. Yesterday, i was talking to my 13 yr old cousin who was arguing w/ me why she needed a cellphone! The worst part is she got it bcuz she screamed incessantly at her parents who finally gave it to her. I’d have had some serious dishoom-dishoom had I even tried that stunt.
Madarchod
Interesting ID 😉
Back in India, I went to a school where we had a strict dress code which included a short haircut.
Once during morning assembly, when everyone’s hair-length was being checked, I wise-cracked to my friend that all Sikhs were going to get into trouble that day. Unfortunately, for me, a Sikh teacher heard me and I got a solid whack across the head for my wit 😉
no, my sister-in-no-mercy, it is NOT wrong. children who aren’t disciplined are turning into my biggest pet peeve.
my mom hosts this religious thing at our house in CA every month…i no longer attend, b/c i cannot bear to see these shitty little brats wreck our house while screeching like banshees with megaphones. their parents were/are all H1-Bs whose wives are at home b/c they aren’t allowed to work, etc., so i can’t imagine what these women are doing with all their free time since they sure as hell aren’t parenting. their husbands, paradigms of productivity and genius at Intel, Apple et al think it’s “cute” that their children act a fool. i wasn’t for corporal punishment until these twenty-somethings my mom “adopted” out of her sympathy for new immigrants started reproducing. now i’m a firm believe in the goodness of an old-fashioned beating.
my poor german shepherd won’t go near my precious, well-behaved godson b/c she’s so freaked out by the aforementioned demon-spawn, she now avoids ALL children. sad.
if you can’t control your children, DON’T HAVE ANY. you’re ruining procreation for the rest of us.
There’s got to be some discernable, unarguable line between scarring-the-kid-for-life corporal punishment and this sort of, “now precious, mommy doesn’t like it when you shout” dithering.
I used to have to baby sit my two billion cousins all the time and I got to do whatever I wanted to them, cuz, well.. family, yeah? One uncle had three sons, so as soon as I walked in the door i’d annouce, “ok, we’re playing cowboys and indians. I’m the cowboy, you’re the indians, and you just lost so I have to capture and tie you up.”
Which I promptly did with assorted jump-ropes and twine. I trussed those kids up like pigs at a luau. They’d wriggle and giggle and loved evey minute of it, and I’d have a decent 45 minutes to myself until they loosened the cords and jumped on the couch screaming for me to do it again.
my point is that I could never, ever, ever have done that with any of the non-family kids I babysat, cause most Americans would see that as bordering on child abuse…right?
I think there is the diametric argument as well. When its family, you can’t say much lest you offend the parent(s) of the imps. Its sort of a catch-22 – I guess in some ways similar to A N N A’s experience(she’d rather not attend the meetings). I have had similar experiences. Some kids are so friggin’ spoiled with their parents being totally blind to their children’s antics.
that’s horrific..
remember reading the same about a school teacher in kolkata. she pulled out a patch of hair from a 4 year old’s head. telegraph metro did a story on it…
I can’t remember ever being hit by a teacher. However, I had an English teacher that I had a great relationship with, which I abused. One day she got sick of my excessive jokes and other random tom-foolery, looked me straight in the eye, and said:
now i’m a firm believe in the goodness of an old-fashioned beating.
my poor german shepherd won’t go near my precious, well-behaved godson b/c she’s so freaked out by the aforementioned demon-spawn, she now avoids ALL children. sad.
Amen (and I’m hindu!) My poor dog, Raja, a golden retriever hates kids now bcuz the spawn of Lucifer used to come over and yank at his hair and hug/choke him to near death. All this while their careless parents thought this was cute. It wasn’t so cute when I yelled at the little hellion and then mom got upset, cried and left. The worst part was my parents wanted me to apologize! This after the beatings I used to take as a kid when I’d wear a baseball hat to school!
oh ANNA, that was SO well put!
I figure there are plenty of people out there having kids, who so visibly cannot manage them, why is it my “duty” (as a uterus owner) to contribute to this?
A friend of mummy’s vacillates from over-indulging her kid and letting it run around buck-wild crazy with no boundaries, to completely coming unglued and screaming exorcist style. It may be easier to say this, me having no kids, but isn’t a little consistancy key here?? Poor kid.
After kids jumping on the couch with their shoes, throwing pillows around, and coloring on the hardwood floors with crayons… I’ve had enough of the pooja-of-the-month club, as well…
“Corporal punishment is a hand-me-down behaviour from out colonial past.”
I seem to remember that the Nippon are quite big fans of this.
And in anycase a bit of brutality allowed a small island to dominant the world.
I had my bare bottom introduced to the paddle at school several times. And if I got the paddle at school, I was sure to get the strap on my bare penis when I got home. I didn’t take too much of that before I straightened up and learned to behave.
I remember my Seventh Day Adventist school in India when I made my benchmate oogle out the sugarcane juice from his nose due to laughter.
He happened to bring his sugarcane juice in a liqour bottle (Could U imagine that) and drink it in the middle of a class session. I couldn’t stay quiet and whispered to him saying a sentence from the lesson “Evils of Drinking”. He burst into laughter and the teacher came by and slapped me real hard coz he was already crying.
Well I lived. But it was still cool…
my lady teachers beats me very hard with a stick on my bottom when iwas a boy in the sixties in Holland
I was caned in the classroom by a sadistic lady teacher on my bordingschool in U.K at the age of seventeen the only reason was that i had avery big and round bottom,where i look i saw sadistic smiles,the teacher caned me 18 times very hard,and she enjoyed it very much, Kate
Maybe Dr. Evil was not kidding when he said: “……..When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum… it’s breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it……..”
While we are at it, my class had a “Drawing Sir” in my school in Mumbai from the 5th to 10th grade, who would come inebriated to class, especially if it was earlier in the day. He would hit on the girls (12-14 yr olds at that time) in class and try to get them to go to his place or stay after school so he could “teach them” how to draw. He also identified the richer kids in class and borrowed money from them, IÂ’m guessing to keep his liquor cabinet stocked up. Most of us never experienced it, but he was clever at identifying the more mischievous kids in class and he beat them, savagely, often with the blackboard eraser. What a role model for my developing years!
I know this is off topic and stuff, but their is something that really irks me. Why are chinese and other asian kids so smart. I know they probably study a lot but is there any other reason? I’m indian and I live in the US and go to a public school here. Unfortunately, I’m not one of the brightest. Everyone above me is either phillipino/chinese/japanese/or korean. Do you have any advice on how to do better when one has so much competition?
some banal advice, education is self improvement!. So your metric is against yourself, but this doesnt mean that you shouldnt work hard. Much easier said than done. 🙂
U would not believe one of my math teacher was so pissed off on me that he groved in his nails in my hands and that time I was in 9th std. Even today those scars are there, how come I can forget that guy R.K Sharma. Whenever i get a chance to meet him, definitely he will get nice beatings from me.
How ’bout that they don’t get out too much!
That teacher is freakin CRAZY. And I bet the parents could make a lot of money off that too. $CACHING$
i was 30 years a headmistress on a girlbordingschool and i caned alot of girlsbottoms even very severe this punishment had good results.
I had a ladyteacher in my 5th grade who taught us maths.She was very strict and her favourite punishment was ear pinching.She had very long nails and used to pinch my ears very hard.She did it for a long period of time and would not let the ear lobes go off till it became tomato red.I always used to get my ears pinched since i did not like maths and was a little talkative.There used to be scratches of her nails on my ear lobes.
The truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Though it is true that there are too many horrid offsprings of overly permissive parents there is still no excusing the physical and psychological sadism children get subjected to in the hands and on the whim of authority. In Montreal, with two working parents I went to a daycare run by nuns during my school off hours. Being hit by a bolo bat on the head (of which the nuns kept stacks as they would often break on impact) or by randomly flung canes (not only to the buttocks but to legs and torsos and arms and faces) was standard practice. 6 year olds who peed themselves (though they weren’t allowed to go to the washroom when they needed to) was to stand in facing the corner barebottomed only with shoes and shirts on for extended periods of time. Discipline is one thing… socipathic behaviour (that only begets more sociopaths) is something else.
gee friends, even reading your posts gave me the creeps. well at least im fortunate enough to have never experienced any such torture. guess i am lucky to find some of the most amazing teachers one could have ever had. there was this mam called mrs sunanda. she was even more caring than our mother. she even ate lunch with us. she ensured that each one of us had proper nutritious meals and brought some extra meal with her just to share with her students she always hugged us. once we were playing cricket inside our class.she heared noises but before she could enter we sat on our own places. but she some how noticed it and asked us with a warm heart to not to hide anything and accept the fact of what u have done. we all stood but then instead of punishing us, she blessed us of showing the courage to tell the truth. guess thats why i am a lot calmer and happy person today
funny this topic came out. someone forwarded me a sordid story the other day about a girl being beaten into a coma by her teacher. her crime. she didnt want to attend the extra-hours tuition administerd by the teacher. the teacher and his dad, also the principal and proprietor of the school, are absconding.
Outside of the classroom my experience is that Indian people are the stupidest ones on the planet. They have no common sense or self-reliance.
I think the “parivar”, Indian family, is both the greatest blessing and greatest curse to Indian individuals.
One of the reasons why desis do so well in academics and in their chosen professions is because of a strong family unit. Children from broken homes have a lot of issues and it effects their academic performance and job/career performance in later years. More often than not, desi kids do not come from broken homes but from two parent family homes and those parents are usually much stricter than non-desi parents and this creates an environment for study.
On the other hand, overbearing and controlling desi parents are probably the reason KN wrote what he did above. They can often disempower individual decision making in their offspring.
It’s a double edged sword but you can’t win em all.
Actually these punishments help me workhard to achieve something that my teacher had thought i will never achieve. My teachers used to beat on the back of my palm with a roller for 100 times for not preparing answers(i do read but i forget). I am not supporting these acts but It works for me emotionally (Emotional drive is my secret of success i am a software engineer and my friends take help from me and it feels great).
Thanks