A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[Society coddles kids in classroom
By EARL McRAE Ottawa Sun
June 25, 2000
Tough teachers.
The directors of the Elvis Sighting Society were having breakfast at Moe's World Famous Newport Restaurant, Society headquarters, when the talk got around to the toughest teachers we ever had. "I've had a few," I said. "Those were the days when teachers were allowed to be tough. Now if a teacher tries to be tough with a punk, the teacher gets in trouble for picking on the punk. No wonder teachers get no respect. The students know they can get away with murder"
"The breakdown in respect is why a lot of teachers are taking early retirement. They're not teachers, they're social workers. Try to get a kid to behave and they get, 'You can't make me.'
"And the parents. Forget it. The parents take the side of their rotten kids. Raise your voice with one of these kids, touch him, and you're in trouble. Not just with the kid who's liable to haul off and nail you, but the educational authoritie".
"When I was a kid, my biggest fear was my parents finding out I'd misbehaved. I'd get it worse at home. And when I say misbehaved, it was nothing like the garbage now. And, the girls. The girls are as bad as the boys. Sometimes worse. The language is awfu"l.
DISCIPLINE
"That's why I could never be a teacher. If one of these cretins trash-talked me, it's out the window head first with a swift kick in the pants. Same if a kid shoved or punched me. Knuckle sandwich. I'd be fired, and so be it. When I was a kid you feared the principal's office. You feared the strap. You feared a suspension. Today? Hell, they consider a suspension a holiday".
"The lack of respect for teachers is a reflection of what's happened in society at large. There are tough teachers who'd like to be tough, but they risk a knife in the ribs or a bullet in the head. The tough teachers I had would spin in their graves if they saw how it is today."
Like Mr. Watson, principal of Grant Consolidated Public School in Britannia. I was in Grade 1. Gordon Fry squealed that I'd bullied him on the way home for lunch. The terrifying Mr. Watson marched me into his office by my ear lobe and jerked me around by my ear lobe until I admitted I'd picked on Fry. It wasn't until years later I told my parents.
Like Mrs. Cole, my Grade 5 teacher at College St. Public School in Trenton. She had black horn-rimmed glasses and a perpetually stern face. If you were being distracting, she'd sneak up and - WHACK! - like a rifle shot as her pointer slammed down across your desk making the pencils, scribblers, and erasers jump; or she'd crack you a short sharp one on the skull followed by a tongue lashing.
Danny Morton distinguished himself by being the only kid to fool around twice on her. His body was a blur as she flung him into the hall, and he had to stay an hour after school for a week studying math. He told his parents an extra gym class had been added. It was the last time Morton fooled around in Mrs. Cole's class. God knows what she'd have done to him a third time.
Like Miss Vezina, my Grade 8 teacher at Rhine Valley Park School in Germany. She was tall, old, skinny, and with a face like a pitchfork. For defying her warning to stop talking, she yanked me by the shirt up from my desk, shook me back and forth like a rag doll in front of the whole class, pencils flying out of my shirt pocket, and heaved me into the hall where I stood shaking with fear of even greater consequences to come. Did my parents ask why my shirt was torn? Are you kidding? I threw it away before they saw it.
Like Mr. Bott, my Grade 9 teacher on the air base at St. Hubert. He was a snarling, tweedy, white-haired Brit. If he caught you goofing around, he'd flick you a stinger on the ear with his thumb and finger. Or pull you by your arm up to the blackboard and make you write from top to bottom, "I will not be a show-off idiot in class anymore."
No climbing the fence as a shortcut home, he'd warned. Ron Pattison, Ian Phillips, and I climbed the fence. Old man Bott saw us.
"The strap tomorrow morning at 10," he shouted. He lined us up in an empty room, read from the Bible, slammed us three good ones on each hand, and made us apologize for our disobedience, which we tremblingly did. None of us told our parents.
The thing is this: Back then we accepted it, there was a sense we deserved what we got when teachers were teachers and - when they had to be - unapologetically, unfearingly, rightly, tough.
The directors of the Elvis Sighting Society suggested I poll the readers on their Toughest Teacher Ever.
I'm thinking about it. Stand by.
McRae can be reached at (613) 739-5133, ext. 469 or emailed at earl_mcrae@ottawasun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|