Major Cruelty.
31 years I've spent in teaching, and one thing I'm constantly grateful for is the fact that the ambiguity over corporal punishment was brought to an end when it was banned in English and Welsh schools in August 1987, just before I took up my first ever teaching post.
I once got into a fight at school, in a PE lesson. It honestly wasn't my fault. The other guy started hitting me, so I hit him back. Cue the Head of PE - a Yorkshireman, short on temper but long on beer gut - arriving. He broke up the fight, then took off his trainer and gave each of us a beating while at the same time chanting, "That'll - teach - you - vi-o-lence - is - wrong!" I would have suspected that this was a crude attempt at ironic hunour, had it not been for the fact that he was a bear of very little brain. I was only 12 but I could see the inherent flaw in his argument, but this
Not that I am bitter, you understand.
