Sadistic teachers

[Lilith7]

The strap, I could live with that. We did the cutting thingy in Standard 4. Teacher wasn't a bad guy and told us it usually happened at the end of each year.

I think that one of the problems with teachers in those days that such a lot of them were returned WW2 vets whom the Govt. offered teacher training as a return to normality. Some of them were bound to be a bit screwed up after being away at war.

When I went to Co-ed High School, I was a chubby early teen suffering from pimples and weight gain, just having found out to my amazement that girls had another purpose in life other than going backwards when dancing. Very self conscious about all this!

The dirty rotten swine S.O.B bar-steward science teacher, calling out our names individually and loudly, asked us what we wanted to take, one of the choices was nutrition. When he got to me, he didn't ask, he said "Aaah, J.....s, you don't look like you need Nutrition" I wished the floor had opened up and swallowed me as everybody laughed.

That bullying & singling a child out wasn't uncommon back then, & I think you may well be right about some of those teachers not coping well after what they'd been through. Perhaps they may even have had PTSD to an extent, who knows because it likely wasn't recognised or understood then.

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Teachers are in a position of power in a classroom, and no matter what the class, bullying will happen now and then. I was very taken aback a few years ago, to discover one of my teachers in a post grad programme at an Auckland university was a dedicated tantrum throwing bully and worse, well known among the faculty and outside for being so. The strange thing was he had received awards for his teaching within the organisation and was a very talented teacher on his good days, but on his bad days he was an appalling monster who delighted in tearing down a vulnerable student with a screaming rant to which there was just no adequate response.

I learnt a hell of a lot from being in his class for a few short weeks, very little about the subject he taught, but a great deal about what happens when you make a formal complaint about someone within an organisation that has no procedures and pathways in place to support such a process. Everytime I read of a child who has been bullied, or abused by an authority figure, I understand all too well just what it feels like to be first assaulted by that person, and then repeatedly hurt by the system hellbent on protecting not the victim, but the bully.

My professor still teaches that class today. And I was most definitely no child during my time in that class.

I think that's almost as bad as  victimising & bullying a child; you'd expect someone in his position to manage far more self control - & that the University allowed it to continue despite having been told about it is disgraceful. He sounds almost unbalanced - OK sometimes but utterly manic at others.

One of our art teachers in high school recalled her time at Uni, & an art tutor there who verbally attacked another student who was disabled by asking if perhaps her mind was as twisted as her body; as high school pupils it came a s a shock that that could happen.