In ,
Jack Campin - bogus address typed:
Some of the teachers I had would have been in serious trouble today,
they often bullied children who didn't have an aptitude for their
subject. A maths teacher we had would often pick up 11 yr old boys
by the ear if they got a sum wrong and would also throw the board
rubber (which had a wooden base) at us.

My father said one of his teachers used to do that (this would have
been in the late 1920s). One day he did it to my father's big
brother,
when he was dozing off in class. Uncle Frank was just awake enough to
automatically catch the eraser and throw it back at him. I don't know
what the consequences were but I doubt they were much fun.

We had the dusters (chalk-board erasers) thrown at us, but it was the chalk
that really hurt.

Only boys coud get the cane when I went to school, but the teachers threw
stuff at all of us. The chalk erasers were bad, but the chalk itself hurt
far more, and there was more of it so a teacher with really good aim and a
fistful of chalk could turn into a gatling gun. however, the projectiles
were usually reserved for kids who were actively misbehaving

There was generally two techniques to wake up a 'day dreamer', the whack on
the desk with the metre rule (I hated that) or the 'surprise question' meant
to humiliate the day dreamer by making them look ignorant. However, the
teachers quickly learnt that there was no point doing that 'surprise
question' thing that for me. I'm exceptionally lucky that whilst a chronic
day-dreamer, I always had some part of my brain following the lesson, and
again was exceptionally lucky to be bright enough to be able to 'fill in the
gaps' if I had happened to doze off.And even worse, i could come out of my
reverie and ask really difficult, complicated, and relevant questions on the
subject that they couldn't answer, one famous one was why they heck did life
evolve from something far less complicated if entropy is a universal law. (I
still don't have an answer to that one). I spent a large part of my school
life being scared to death by that sudden 'whack' of the metre-rule landing
on my desk micrometres from my face, but it didn't stop me day dreaming.
Going to Uni and being part of a 'seminar' rather than a 'lecture' was a
revelation - a lecture will put me straight into a semi-somnolent state,
but a seminar will generally keep me awake and interested. I thik all
different teaching techniques are now used in modern schools to cater for
different 'learning styles', but back then there was only one style of
teaching, and tough luck to those it didn't suit.

Every single teacher (well, bar the ones that taught the 'practical'
subjects like music and sewing) always lamented about how much better I
could be if I only *tried*.

My objection was that there was no need for me to *try*, I was doing
perfectly OK as a slacker. Which I was. I got the marks I needed to get the
job i wanted, what was the point of working any harder than I had to?

Yowie